00:00:00.510 - 00:00:18.120

Unknown: This is Norman Oh brown trying to record some memoirs primarily for our children and grandchildren. It is August 1988.

00:00:19.410 - 00:00:32.520

On October 1, will be our golden wedding. It is for me go Odin wending

00:00:33.930 - 00:00:50.550

golden wedding go Olden wending. The pun is taken from James Joyce Finnegans Wake, trying to speak memoir, I am

00:00:51.420 - 00:01:06.870

reflective rather than spontaneous. And in making this recording, I am going to allow myself the literary and other illusions as

00:01:06.870 - 00:01:27.240

they come into my mind at Santa Cruz, I once gave a public autobiographical lecture trying to explain how I came to write the books that I had written. I

00:01:27.270 - 00:01:58.620

titled The lecture, but that's not it. I was thinking of Shakespeare's Cleopatra trying to say goodbye to Antony. So you and I must part but that's not it. So you and I have loved but there's not it that you know, well. Something it is I would.

00:01:59.910 - 00:02:20.220

Oh, my oblivion is a very Antony, and I am all forgotten. I have thought enough about myth and history, fact and fiction, to know that the truth cannot be told.

00:02:21.600 - 00:02:37.590

There is always another way to tell a story. Like Hermes, the thief, I was born on a mountain side 10,000 feet above

00:02:37.650 - 00:02:50.970

the sea, in el oro, Mexico, above Toluca in the district of federal

00:02:53.220 - 00:03:05.820

where they were mining gold. My father, Norman Charles Brown, was a very English man.

00:03:07.500 - 00:03:26.160

But not really English. He came from Ireland, Northern Ireland, a Protestant Presbyterian, Ulster man, my mother,

00:03:27.210 - 00:03:37.230

with a beautiful exotic name of Margarita Maria Catalina Coloma dish fent

00:03:39.420 - 00:04:05.580

was part Cuban, and part German, or rather, Franco German from Alsace. This improbable conjuncture is the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the browns. My father was the first to break

00:04:05.580 - 00:04:23.670

out of the circle of Anglo Irish Protestant culture and choosing his bride. The ancient home of the brown family was in Donna Moore county to Rome, Northern

00:04:23.700 - 00:04:43.830

Ireland. I live in Donna more for perhaps as long as six months perhaps about the age of eight, that would make it around 1921.

00:04:45.030 - 00:05:02.730

I am not now doing any research and old letters or other records so that factual details are necessarily vague and inexact My father brought the whole family

00:05:03.750 - 00:05:30.750

back to Donna more. After he left Mexico for the last time, about 1921 we stayed at her eignet the mansion or a state of cousins, the richer branch of the brown family in dhanak more I remember

00:05:30.750 - 00:05:56.280

their soap factory in the town, where they made a brand of soap called Colleen to good to preserve that Irish girl complexion. I remember their feudal standing in the midst of the Irish peasantry, Irish and predominantly Catholic county to

00:05:56.280 - 00:06:13.650

Rome was thin and still is I believe about equally divided between Protestant and Catholic. I remember Sunday church services for some reason not in Donna more,

00:06:14.640 - 00:06:23.340

but at a nearby village called something like castle Ray.

00:06:25.290 - 00:06:48.720

I wish I still had the Bible, which was given to me in scribed for 90% 97% answering by the Reverend MacLean himself. I remember if a bank and our bow

00:06:48.720 - 00:07:07.740

wrath mansions belonging to other members of the richer browns, I remember Christmas carols and cousin Ada racing

00:07:09.000 - 00:07:29.010

cashew touristical questions as to whether good king Wenceslas which celebrates the charity of the upper classes. Why was really an appropriate Christmas Carol,

00:07:29.580 - 00:07:44.040

for members of the upper class to sing. By this time 1921 both my father's parents, my grandparents,

00:07:46.260 - 00:08:09.150

whom I do not remember, were dead. I do not remember being shown any house in donath more identified as the house where my father grew up. My father was the youngest of seven children of three brothers, my uncle's,

00:08:09.270 - 00:08:29.970

Willie, Sidney, and Herbert and three sisters. My aunt Lillian, Helen, and Nita. All of these children of the humbler branch of the family emigrated

00:08:29.970 - 00:08:49.500

from Donna more in my mind, and in my imagination. My father's story begins when he was asked to take charge of his elder brother, Herbert, and emigrate with him to South Africa.

00:08:51.480 - 00:09:02.910

My uncle Herbert, was dying of TB. And the high uppland of the South African felt

00:09:04.080 - 00:09:22.320

was looked upon as the last chance to save his life. A South African felt worked his recovery. He lived to have a large family cousins who might have never seen

00:09:24.720 - 00:09:42.450

in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, he lived to commit suicide in the Great Depression of the 1930s. I remember when the news of his suicide came to us living

00:09:42.930 - 00:09:56.400

in Bristol. My father, pacing up and down in our little back garden at 102 Redland road. My father must have been

00:09:56.430 - 00:10:15.120

18 or even younger when he took care brought her to South Africa. They both fought in the South African war. I have my father's medals

00:10:17.010 - 00:10:40.080

from the South African war, naming the some of the great battles of the year 1900 relief of Lady Smith, in which he participated. After the South African war, he got into gold mining in South Africa. Then after getting a little more

00:10:40.080 - 00:11:05.820

technical training as a mining engineer in England, he accepted a job with the Anglo American el oro mining and Railroad Company in Mexico. On the way to Mexico, he met my mother on the boat. It must have been in 1912.

00:11:08.610 - 00:11:39.780

Who knows what really happened? What determines the outcome? I can only tell the story as a whirlwind shipboard romance under the Caribbean moon. My mother was 21 years old or less, and 10 years younger than my father. She was on her way from

00:11:39.780 - 00:12:02.340

Germany to Havana to visit her mother's relatives for the first time. My father and my mother had at that time, no common language. My father never had a foreign language more than a smattering

00:12:02.340 - 00:12:25.170

of Spanish. My mother was a brilliant linguist was German, Spanish and English fluent. But at that time, her English must have been no better than school to English. I

00:12:25.170 - 00:12:44.640

remember being told that my mother's Cuban relatives were very suspicious of the strange Englishman's intentions and insisted upon two weddings, one in the British Consulate,

00:12:44.940 - 00:13:15.630

and another in a presumably Catholic Church. The cultural divide between my father's family and my mother's family was accentuated by the World War. My mother's brother, Carlos Guyer, my mother's mother, married twice,

00:13:17.400 - 00:13:33.150

Guyer and went forth on the My, my uncle Carlos fought on the German side and World War One for my father was fighting on the British side.

00:13:35.130 - 00:13:54.630

I never met my uncle Carlos. And over the years it was not the gentleman, but the Cuban side of my mother's family that played a role in my life. First, my Cuban

00:13:54.630 - 00:14:09.180

grandmother, and then my uncle, Pedro, who lived in Havana, and of whom more later

00:14:11.820 - 00:14:41.130

the year of my birth, on the 25th of September 1913 coincided with a new outbreak of violence in the Mexican Revolution. Now directed against Anglo American imperialism, such as the aura mining and railroad

00:14:41.160 - 00:14:57.210

company. I was told that American newspapers carried my picture as the youngest refugee from Mexico when the World War broke out, my father

00:14:58.800 - 00:15:18.030

who was As I remember him even later in the 30s, a straightforward unquestioning Patriot, volunteered and served in the Royal Field Artillery

00:15:19.980 - 00:15:39.930

have his metal the Great War for civilization 1914 to 1919. while fighting in the trenches, he left his family in the Dublin area of Southern Ireland.

00:15:41.160 - 00:15:55.320

Whether his brother Willie and his sisters, Nita, Lillian and Helen had already emigrated. This was

00:15:55.320 - 00:16:14.670

before the establishment of the Irish Free State when Southern Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. My earliest dateable memory is our must to stay in

00:16:14.670 - 00:16:34.560

November the 11th 1918. Me and my sister waving union checks and dancing on the top of hoath head, near Dublin,

00:16:35.190 - 00:16:51.120

hoath Castle, and environments the scene of the action in James Joyce Finnegans Wake. River run past Eve and Adam's

00:16:51.780 - 00:17:16.320

from swerve of shore to bend the bay brings us by a commode just vicus of re circulation back to host castle, and environments. After the war, the family returned to el otro. Mexico. I must have been about

00:17:16.320 - 00:17:40.890

five years old. We lived there till I was about eight. When we returned to England, I have a whole layer of childhood memories from this period in Mexico. They say that my sister and I were speaking

00:17:40.890 - 00:18:06.540

Spanish to each other when we first arrived in England. And when I subsequently went back to Mexico for the first time, on our honeymoon in 1938, the language did come back to me. on that trip, we had a car and just above

00:18:06.600 - 00:18:21.720

Toluca, we saw a road sign pointing to a laurel de Hidalgo 60 or 70 kilometers. We did not

00:18:21.990 - 00:18:31.500

go back. Having been born in Mexico, facilitated my

00:18:32.880 - 00:18:55.410

reentry into the United States. Otherwise, I would have had to go back to England to get a permanent visa. I have the notion I'm not sure how legally correct it is that I have triple citizenship, Mexican, British

00:18:55.470 - 00:19:06.240

and American. I have used my Mexican identity real or imaginary, to articulate

00:19:06.990 - 00:19:27.210

a sense of being different from the Anglo Saxon culture of England and even later, America. From my childhood in el oro. I remember

00:19:28.530 - 00:19:48.750

fragments of the colonialists scene. The company house on which we live separated by a neglected tennis court from an American family living next door. A Holmes's

00:19:49.710 - 00:20:21.450

I remember earliest games of sexual exploration with their children. I remember the next second servant girl and Our house, the criada who was like a nurse unto us children. Her name was Maria and I can still sing a Mexican song she taught us can

00:20:21.450 - 00:20:42.510

also host and sound goes. Nah no Tanja they me some more raise case a Miran dentro de todos como fueron das es tracheas. Linda No, you're my parents lifestyle

00:20:42.540 - 00:20:58.950

in this period of their lives was I think conventionally colonialist though not high up on the social scale. My father's position in the company

00:20:58.950 - 00:21:23.580

was that of Chief essayer. The house on the hill side had a magnificent view of the valley below the Mexican settlement of where the rail road ran to the junction to t nangal. And on to Mexico City.

00:21:24.600 - 00:21:40.560

There was a company golf course. My father always liked to play golf, but couldn't afford it much later. My mother at this stage of her life, was trying to

00:21:40.560 - 00:22:07.500

conform. I remember her to dressed for golf at being compatible. Though this seems with her later personality. I remember parties with a bachelor contingent leading to singing little black sheep that have gone astray. The gentleman

00:22:07.500 - 00:22:35.700

ranchers out for us pray, Lord have mercy on such as we that song remained a favorite of my father's perhaps remembering his bachelor days in South Africa. I remember we had a subscription to a magazine called overseas, published by the overseas club

00:22:35.820 - 00:22:52.500

in London. For Englishman scattered throughout the world. I remember slightly garbled the quotation from Tennyson that appeared on the cover of every issue.

00:22:54.270 - 00:23:13.200

To many oceans, we did sail and found that many a mighty state, pray God, our greatness may not fail through graven fears of being great about 1921

00:23:14.730 - 00:23:44.220

I am not stopping to verify dates. We left Mexico and returned to the old country. In later years, I was told that this was a sacrifice my father made in order to give his children an education of British education. He did not belong to

00:23:44.220 - 00:24:05.700

that upper echelon of the colonialist aristocracy before he could afford to send their children back to a boarding school in England. After returning from Mexico, we stayed first in

00:24:05.730 - 00:24:27.450

Ireland. My father, I guess, was trying to make up his mind what to do. It was at this time that we live for some months including Christmas in Donna more as previously recorded. The next

00:24:27.480 - 00:25:05.250

chapter in my life story unfolds in London, two years and London 1922 1923 my British education began. We live at 87 rust Hall Avenue in West End, near the turnham green station on the underground. I took The Underground every day from

00:25:05.550 - 00:25:29.790

turnham green to court or Hammersmith to attend first a private Preparatory School and then call it court. The official Preparatory School leading to St. Paul's one of the

00:25:29.790 - 00:25:59.640

great English public schools that call it court. My Scholastic Ability appeared for the first time. I remember that the whole class was ranked in individual order, and the results dictated publicly by the master. In one subject, the

00:25:59.640 - 00:26:23.610

class list began cannon Brown, and in another subject began brown cannon. This was at that time, an incomprehensible joke to me later, but soon, I picked up the

00:26:23.610 - 00:26:57.660

drive for competitive excellence in homarus phrase always, tend to Excel or others. I remember at seven rust Hall Avenue as cramped and dingy dwelling brightened at least part of the time by a visit of my Cuban grandmother, my mother's mother,

00:26:58.920 - 00:27:12.180

coming from Germany, perhaps escaping from the chaotic condition of Germany at that time. Wish I could tell you more about my Cuban grandmother.

00:27:14.310 - 00:27:27.600

I have written to her only surviving child, my uncle Pedro. still living in Miami.

00:27:28.260 - 00:27:47.220

More about his family later. Just asking him if there is any record of her life. I remember her as an exuberantly vital presence, large Infoseek at that time, and large in manner,

00:27:48.300 - 00:28:09.510

instead of the conventional Spanish affection of diminutive, abuelita little grandmother. I nicknamed her a boy Luna. In retrospect, this period in London seems to represent the

00:28:09.510 - 00:28:30.390

nature of my father's fortunes. Instead of pursuing his career as a mining engineer, he seems to have ventured his savings and efforts to establish himself as a small businessman.

00:28:31.980 - 00:28:59.310

I remember him on his bike. We never had a car going round house to house building up and insurance practice based on weekly contributions of pennies or shillings. also trying to make a go of our ramshackle

00:28:59.340 - 00:29:26.250

laundry establishment. This was before the days of laundromats and before it was over. I remember talk of emigrating again, to grow tomatoes in the Channel Islands, or even to to emigrate to Tasmania to do what I know not.

00:29:27.900 - 00:29:56.460

Finally, my father got a job, which lasted him throughout my childhood and until his retirement with Capra pass and company, a 10 mining and importing company in Bristol. We live at 102 Redland road,

00:29:57.270 - 00:30:33.660

Clifton, Bristol. My father owned the house, but rented out the upstairs flat. We lived on the ground floor and the basement. This was my home from 1924 to 1936. The years as a day boy at Clifton college living at home, and the four years at

00:30:33.690 - 00:31:00.150

Oxford 1932 to 36. When I left for the United States, my memory now of growing up in England, is indelibly colored by the decision later to abandon England for the United States. I

00:31:00.150 - 00:31:31.020

have grown accustomed to tell my story, as of one who was not at home in England, as if I was all the time destined to break away. If you tell the story at all, it seems as if memory cannot avoid narrative conventions such as the idea of destiny, which lend

00:31:31.050 - 00:31:48.660

dignity, or at least elementary coherence to our lives. And leaving England involved a break in the continuity of memory. There were things that had to be forgotten.

00:31:49.980 - 00:32:17.070

Occasionally, I remember how attached I used to be to the English countryside, family holidays, at the seaside in Dorset, or long bicycle trips by myself, exploring Somerset or Gloucester, or the mountain

00:32:17.580 - 00:32:37.080

region of pin lemon in Wales. But I developed a posture of not wanting to go back and disinclination to towards nostalgic memories.

00:32:38.910 - 00:33:07.410

The only way I can tell this story is one who was not at home in England, that my memories of my experience at Clifton college are now structured to exhibit the drama of the outsider who makes good, a poor day boy in a boarding school and a poor

00:33:08.130 - 00:33:33.450

scholarship boy in a very class conscious society, a sort of second class citizen who nevertheless attains the pinnacle of success, head of the school and the captain of the football team. memory has cherished moments of poignant

00:33:33.510 - 00:33:45.720

alienation to fit this pattern. In one of our boxes of miscellaneous photographs, there is a

00:33:45.780 - 00:34:07.800

picture of the unveiling of a statue of general Haig overlooking the Clifton college playing field. General Hague was one of the big butchers of World War One and one of Clifton College's most distinguished sons

00:34:08.370 - 00:34:28.710

in the picture. I the head of the school I'm standing near to Hague's daughter unveiling the statue, but the anti imperialist tongue, in which I tell this story was certainly not part of my

00:34:28.710 - 00:34:53.310

feelings at the time. At Clifton, I absorbed the standard education of the English gentleman without questioning its validity, absorbing a classical education without questioning its relevance, absorbing the grim regime of

00:34:53.310 - 00:35:15.750

intramural and intercollegiate athletics so effective in producing Hardie bodies as well as hardy English characters. In fact, I may owe my lifelong good health to the regime of physical culture at Clifton. I have

00:35:15.750 - 00:35:24.180

memories that suggest that in childhood, I had been a sickly or a weakling.

00:35:25.440 - 00:35:43.440

I absorbed the Hummel erratic. I meant, of course, to say homoerotic. But I will leave the self betraying slip of the tongue. I absorbed the homoerotic atmosphere of the

00:35:43.470 - 00:36:01.470

English public school. I remember one romantic friendship. There were no girls in my life at Clifton. There were frustrated, frustrated, aborted ventures

00:36:01.470 - 00:36:23.160

into heterosexuality at Oxford. I did not really graduate into hex heterosexuality till I came to America. I observed the conventional Church of England religiosity dispensed by Clifton

00:36:23.160 - 00:36:49.980

chapel three times a week and twice on Sundays. They day boys being required to participate just like board borders. But I remember that my confirmation into the Church of England had something fraudulent about it took place late in my career at

00:36:49.980 - 00:37:20.460

Clifton, as part of a deliberate effort to establish my position in the establishment, and against a background of other religious tendencies at work in my family. The seeds of dissent in me, I now think, were sown by the contradiction between the

00:37:20.460 - 00:37:48.630

ideology I was getting at my English public school, and what was going on in my family at home with which I was in daily contact. Unlike the boarders, whom I'm so much envied, my life tune gave me access to a veritable counterculture

00:37:49.680 - 00:38:10.650

alternative to the point of view, I was being given in the English public school. This counter cultural tendency, I attribute entirely to my mother's influence. My mother, who I

00:38:10.680 - 00:38:34.410

picture, as having been in our Mexican period, caught up in the conventional life of the colonialist became in our Bristol period, the driving force involving the whole family

00:38:35.100 - 00:38:59.820

in the social consequences of her quest for an ideological framework to support her instinctive dissatisfaction with the establishment orthodoxy. She had a brilliant mind, overflowing with talent, and accomplished linguist as I

00:38:59.820 - 00:39:27.360

remember, not an English, German, French and Spanish, also a talented musician on the violin, she had never been given higher education and the conventional training and critical method and systematic self doubt, in Bristol, her

00:39:27.360 - 00:39:55.410

religious quest involve the family first with the Unitarian Church and then, more extreme with the Philosophical Society. Subsequently, her innate restlessness with any dogmatic system led her out of the Theosophical Society through

00:39:55.500 - 00:40:26.100

anthroposophy, I think and to us Secret mystical order, which I think was the order of the Golden Dawn about which books have been written, particularly in connection with the involvement in occultism of the poet, William Butler Yeats in my

00:40:26.100 - 00:40:46.920

Bristol adolescence Theosophy was a real presence, portraits of any percent, Madame blavatsky and Krishna Morty, then being presented

00:40:47.280 - 00:41:06.090

by an a percent as the new messianic Master, and being for a short while, so accepted by my mother, the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Bristol

00:41:07.260 - 00:41:35.550

was the center of a countercultural social life with a turn to the east represented by Theosophy poured fresh and emancipating ideas and images, such as reincarnation and karma into the dingy life of lower middle class intelligence. I

00:41:35.550 - 00:41:55.830

remember the aspet destress in the window. Like I said, I remember my mother as being the driving force in the family's involvement in the philosophical counterculture. My father, I believe, had lost the

00:41:55.830 - 00:42:06.870

original Presbyterian faith, so alive in my memories of Donna Moore. He was not an intellectual.

00:42:08.160 - 00:42:32.340

I have called him a straightforward British Patriot, his natural instincts or to confirm but in some incomprehensible way, he went along with my mother, at least in the outward motions.

00:42:33.780 - 00:42:53.430

As I remember it, my reaction at the time to my mother's occultist and theosophical adventures, was figured us British argumentative descent. My life story shows that at another level, my

00:42:53.430 - 00:43:17.610

mother's ideas are getting under my skin, not ever to be simply discarded. But in any case, it was in this atmosphere of the home that I first learned that there were alternative cultural patterns competing for allegiance, and that one had to

00:43:17.610 - 00:43:42.510

make up one's own mind. In my formative years in Bristol, there was life at school. There was life at home. There was also life on summer vacations. The English word is

00:43:42.510 - 00:44:12.300

holidays, summer holidays in Ireland. They were not so frequent. But they bought large in the landscape of memory, a pastoral landscape to which memory returns with relief and gladness. summer holidays in Ireland on the farm. Two of my

00:44:12.300 - 00:44:42.600

father sisters had married farmers working farms in what became the Irish Free State. They were Protestant Gentry farmers, hard working themselves, but employing Irish Catholic laborers, on whose help they depended. They use to pay

00:44:42.600 - 00:45:11.760

tribute to the decency of their Irish tenant laborers and of the Irish government in curing what they call the Time of Troubles the emergence of the Irish Free State 1918 to 1921. They could have been thrown out, they said, but they were not. The

00:45:11.760 - 00:45:38.190

Protestants in the Irish Free State. were well aware that they were treated better by the Catholic majority than the way the Catholic minority and Ulster was treated by the Protestant majority. My sister Eileen and I were generously taken in for a

00:45:38.190 - 00:45:57.720

month in the country, divided between my aunt Helen and Uncle john, and my aunt Lillian and Uncle Harry. My aunt Helen married john smith, whose form was copalis

00:45:59.250 - 00:46:27.930

at donabate, encounter dot Dublin. Their children my cousins who might remember as playmates were Lancelot, and Stewart and Priscilla. My aunt Lillian married Harry Gill, whose farm was ashmont, Enfield rasmalai on County

00:46:28.320 - 00:46:48.030

Meath. Their children were alive, and Mamie and Herbert copalis and donabate had irresistible special attractions for children. There was the

00:46:48.030 - 00:47:08.070

seaside copalis was on the tidal Bay. Looking across to Malahide, hoath head and Ireland sigh. There was the daily walk, led by my aunt Helen and Nita through the sand dunes to the

00:47:08.070 - 00:47:35.370

beach, with the Martello tower, looking across to lambay Island, but on both forms, there was easy going immersion in the rhythm of farm life. Old Fashioned haying with horses. Hey, Cox winched up on two flat hay wagons and taken to the

00:47:35.370 - 00:48:00.720

barn. sheep shearing cattle are rounded up from market. Manure being pitch for by individual pitch for gone to the fields. There were no motor cars and the family only pony traps for transportation. Visiting children my sister and I were

00:48:00.720 - 00:48:22.860

generously allowed to imagine they were participating in the life and work of the farm. I still have fleeting memories of the different world of the Irish Catholic labor of religious services on Sunday we're mandatory in both houses. The

00:48:22.860 - 00:48:40.050

Acropolis family attended somewhat perfunctorily to establish Protestant Church of Ireland. In donabate. religious life at ash mount

00:48:41.460 - 00:49:08.040

was more intense, more exotic, more memorable. My Uncle Harry Ray, gently good humoured father figure who included me in the circle he embraced as ethnic Irish for my boy. My Uncle Harry confessed that he'd been a bit of a Hellraiser in his youth,

00:49:08.850 - 00:49:26.700

Hunton and all that perhaps even drinking but but be to offer to confess, my Uncle Harry had been born again. And now the family at ashmont belonged to a conventional

00:49:28.440 - 00:49:48.990

dictionary definition of conventional and assembly for religious worship, especially a secret or illegal meeting for worship, in forms other than those of the established church specifically, such an assembly held by non conformance or

00:49:48.990 - 00:50:12.180

dissenters in England, or by Covenanters in Scotland. The conventions are met on Sundays and different members houses in rotation. I remember the long pony trap rides and the assembly of pony traps which marked the place of gathering. Protestants

00:50:12.180 - 00:50:33.930

in County Meath were scarcer than Protestants in county Dublin. This was a more fightclub form of religiosity for a beleaguered Protestant minority. The second was called Cooney, IDEs, by the Protestant establishment. I have found the

00:50:33.930 - 00:50:58.170

name of Cooney and some encyclopedia. I picked up from somewhere the knowledge that they were called White rabbits, by the Irish peasant culture that surrounded them. I do not know what they call themselves. I remember the religiosity of

00:50:58.170 - 00:51:14.760

the ash mount household austerely, puritanical, without loss of good humor, and generous human feelings. profane entertainment of any kind,

00:51:15.390 - 00:51:30.450

was avoided. I believe. My cousins, the younger generation to this day have never been to a theater or movie house. I remember the contentcal

00:51:30.450 - 00:52:03.360

meetings on Sundays, long, long periods on my knees, waiting for another voice move by the Spirit to be raised in prayer. But I was too young or not yet born again. Or so long to bring Peter Rabbit as well as a Bible to distract myself with. And I

00:52:03.360 - 00:52:28.440

remember occasions when my older cousin Olive, kneeling next to me, had to quiet me with tickling on my hand. I have been back to Ireland

00:52:28.500 - 00:53:02.250

only once since coming to the United States in 1936. I have already spoken of the necessary forgetting of the past, involved in my transmit trends migration to American soil. Beth and I made a tour of Ireland somewhere around 1978 or at the uncles and

00:53:02.250 - 00:53:19.320

aunts were of course gone. We visited my cousin Lancelot at corpus. Now they're in store with his wife, Stella, very much the country gentlemen.

00:53:20.430 - 00:53:38.040

That's Lancelot Smith. Also my cousin Herbert Gill, at ash mount, with his wife Mima. More like a gentleman farmer.

00:53:39.600 - 00:53:53.190

Also my cousin Herbert's two married sisters, my cousin all of Swanton living in Nina Conti to her ready

00:53:54.330 - 00:54:26.280

and my cousin made me bowls. Living in church town, near Nevin in County Meath. I have since heard that my cousin Herbert, guide relatively young and childless and the farm at ash mount has been handed over to Olive Swanson's eldest son.

00:54:35.400 - 00:55:14.010

In 1932, a new phase of my life begins 1932 to 1936 were my four years at Oxford made possible by winning two scholarships each worth 100 pounds a year. Which made me completely self supporting. Although I am sure that if I had not won the

00:55:14.010 - 00:55:39.960

scholarship, my parents would have done everything. One of the scholarships was offered by Clifton college, from a special endowment to promote to help students going from Clifton college, to baillio College Oxford. The other was a

00:55:39.960 - 00:56:06.420

scholarship offered by Baylor College in open competition on the basis of proficiency in the standard curriculum of classical studies, I was the top classical scholar in my year at paleo,

00:56:07.920 - 00:56:25.440

a position which carried some rich ritual obligations such as speechifying at Alumni Weekend, known at Oxford as God a night.

00:56:27.210 - 00:56:57.210

Looking back on those years at Oxford, which culminated in 1936, immediately after my graduation was my departure from England for the United States. I can't help now seeing those years at Oxford in terms of later developments, and saying

00:56:57.510 - 00:57:19.140

that the decisive thing that happened to me was the organization of my discontent with English culture, into an ideology of radical political dissent. Looking back

00:57:19.950 - 00:57:35.370

on it now, it seems to me that it happened to me rather than I did it, I was caught up in a mass movement of disaffected British

00:57:35.370 - 00:58:00.480

intelligentsia. In my case, lower middle class. But the disaffection of my generation at Oxford, with the British establishment was a mass movement. That was the significance of the scandal of the Oxford oath. I will not die

00:58:00.480 - 00:58:19.440

for King and Country when this motion was carried by a large majority, and the Oxford Union, the political debating society in which all politically

00:58:20.820 - 00:58:35.880

interested undergraduates are voting members. The outraged Colonel blimps among the alumni sent a sack full of white feathers, symbol of

00:58:35.880 - 00:59:04.110

cowardice. I picked up my white feather in remembrance of that vote. The refusal to die for King and Country was not a politically serious vote in favor of pacifism. But a rejection of traditional police shades of blind obedience and

00:59:04.140 - 00:59:33.270

mindless patriotism. Probably the most significant political action, and which I had a prominent part at Oxford was the coup by which the left captured control of the baleal College Junior common room. The Junior common room was the apparatus of

00:59:33.270 - 00:59:53.070

students self government, inside the college, such as it was in those days. This was a sort of revolt of the lower middle class against the upper class elite.

00:59:55.350 - 01:00:15.960

upper class elite represented By the most prestigious public school, the Etonians had traditionally monopolized the presidency of the junior common room. We broke up

01:00:16.050 - 01:00:27.510

that monopoly and a elected Stewart, Hampshire, the philosopher, the late later, world famous philosopher

01:00:28.800 - 01:00:48.270

as our candidate. Apart from electoral shenanigans, we put up some extra Etonian candidates to split the Etonian vote. The left campaigned on a

01:00:48.270 - 01:01:19.830

platform to liberalize The so called parietal rules the rule, the rules restricting the presence of female visitors in the men's rooms. I believe my role in this not really political but cultural and very minor revolution did earn me the

01:01:19.830 - 01:01:45.990

hostility of the establishment sector. Among the burial college Dawn's that must have been in 1935. The next year 1936, which would be my last year at Oxford, we exploited the presidency of the

01:01:46.020 - 01:02:11.580

bill, Junior common room to raise money in support of the March on London have unemployed Welsh miners. On their way to London, they can't near Oxford. I remember working at the camp. Perhaps it is characteristic of my temperament. That What I

01:02:11.580 - 01:02:37.980

remember most clearly was the Welsh miners singing, not revolutionary songs. But the evangelical hymn bread from heaven, bread from heaven feed me to lie never die. But this local action was part of a national campaign on behalf of

01:02:37.980 - 01:02:56.730

the unemployed, organized at that time with Communist Party participation and support. On second thoughts, I think it is misleading

01:02:58.770 - 01:03:35.610

to speak as I did earlier, of my Oxford years as producing the organization of my discontent with English culture into an ideology of radical political dissent. It was only in America in Chicago in 1936 to eight that I acquired any real familiarity

01:03:35.640 - 01:04:10.170

with the working class or with leftism as a real political movement. finding myself a new identity and identifying myself was a republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. And identifying myself was the mass the great mass movement of trade

01:04:10.170 - 01:04:39.210

union organization, which led to the formation of the CIO. It was only at the University of Wisconsin in 1939. And after and risk with the help of that pioneering Marxist scholar Orban Winspear,

01:04:39.360 - 01:05:12.300

who was my tutor there. It was only then and there that I perceived and embrace the idea of a Marxist reinterpretation of the classical tradition of high culture. at Oxford in 1932, to six spontaneous encoded tendencies to the left coexisted

01:05:12.360 - 01:05:39.510

with the body of traditional high culture being transmitted to me as my Oxford education. The traditional Oxford education was the main thing. And even if it no longer made complete sense to me, I never doubted that I had to do well at it right to

01:05:39.780 - 01:06:10.110

the conventional course in classical culture, Humane Letters or literary humanely or as as it was called in those days at Oxford. The program consisted of two sequences of two years study called mods and greats. mods was a program of

01:06:10.110 - 01:06:40.290

study in Greco Roman literature greats was a program of study in Greco Roman history, Greco Roman philosophy and also what they called modern philosophy. At the end of each sequence, there was a public That is to say university wide examination,

01:06:41.070 - 01:07:07.770

after which honors were awarded. I did indeed get first class honors in both parts, the so called double first. In the first part, as I recall, I had no difficulty in applying myself with diligence. To the study of lucretius was Cyril Bailey,

01:07:08.820 - 01:07:24.660

Greek lyric poetry with Bara, Aristophanes with tF hyam. These are the lectures which impressed themselves most clearly on my memory. It was in the second part,

01:07:25.830 - 01:07:43.110

and in particular in connection with modern philosophy, that the tension began to manifest itself the tension between my own emerging point of view and the dominant trends in the culture.

01:07:45.390 - 01:08:15.990

This is not the time to attempt an analysis of philosophy at Oxford in the 1930s years later, I discovered RG Collingwood's autobiography, in which that eccentric British philosopher indicted British philosophy as complicit in the drift of

01:08:15.990 - 01:08:31.770

British culture, towards the disaster of the Munich crisis, and the loss of will to resist the rise of fascism, fiddling while Rome burns,

01:08:32.790 - 01:08:45.870

lost in trivial academic disputes, insulated from European and World thought, ignorant

01:08:46.890 - 01:09:10.140

or paying no attention to the larger questions of the interpretation of world history. But at the time, I was just a very confused young man wandering in the woods of Oxford philosophy, looking for something different, something

01:09:10.140 - 01:09:23.670

radical, something new. There was no marks or Marxism in the Oxford curriculum or culture in those days,

01:09:25.260 - 01:09:59.520

I think of my lifelong friend, Christopher Hill. Marxist historian, author of so many books on 17th century England and the English revolution overcame master of failure in the 1960s as having spent his life stuffing Marxism down the

01:09:59.520 - 01:10:25.740

throat of the British and specifically Oxford establishment at Oxford, in the 1930s. The new thing was the new philosophy of language derived from vidkun Stein, which became,

01:10:26.850 - 01:10:51.360

and has been the dominant trend in Anglo speaking philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic during my lifetime, very much later in my life. After exposure to Freud and psycho analytical ideas, I was able to see the possible role of a new

01:10:51.360 - 01:11:16.410

philosophy of language in the making of a cultural revolution. French structuralist philosophy in my lifetime has some achievements to its credit along these lines, most prominently associated with the name of Lakhan. attempting a synthesis

01:11:16.440 - 01:11:35.160

of Freud and Marx, on the basis of a new philosophy of language, in my work, in life against death, the chapter on language and Eros is quite mature.

01:11:38.340 - 01:12:01.080

It is only an loves body, and with the turn to poetry as well as psychoanalysis, or the turn to a poetic interpretation of psychoanalysis, that a new approach to language really enters the picture. The Oxford

01:12:01.080 - 01:12:28.050

philosophy of language, based on a marriage of vidkun Stein, and traditional British empiricism, and innocent of any Freud in admixture had no such revolutionary or emancipatory potential. That never really got to be more than an expression of

01:12:28.050 - 01:12:50.250

conventional academic skepticism, and British parochial insulation from European thought, a convenient ideology for academic intelligentsia voting for the liberal or the Labour Party in the period after world war two

01:12:52.380 - 01:13:11.790

Stuart hampshire's lifelong project to fortify this bland potion by an admixture of psycho analytical radicalism was never carried through. In my final examination at

01:13:11.790 - 01:13:25.890

Oxford, I did not think that I understood what was going on in philosophy, and concentrated my effort to excel and ancient history.

01:13:27.420 - 01:13:57.840

But it turned out that my first class honors were achieved in philosophy. I spent the whole three hours of the examination writing an answer to one question, two propositions exist. I believe the grand conclusion I reached was that

01:13:57.840 - 01:14:24.240

they do not exist, but they subsist. I am grateful that my later Marxist reorientation has left me with no sympathy for such parlor games, of academic philosophizing. The only one of my teachers

01:14:24.240 - 01:14:35.160

at Oxford, who was married memory I cherish and my remained in touch with his Isaiah Berlin,

01:14:35.640 - 01:14:58.800

who was then a fellow of all souls college. It was lucky for me that I was found out from Berio to be tutored in philosophy by him. He was then doing philosophy and then

01:14:58.980 - 01:15:22.860

fashionable way My copy of Ayres book on language, truth and logic was bought by me when I was still a Belial in 1936. But Berlin was always

01:15:24.180 - 01:15:48.960

doing much more than that. And touch with European thought in a way that made him unique not only in Oxford, but in England as a whole. Isaiah Berlin was then writing his book on Karl Marx, an anti Marxist

01:15:48.990 - 01:16:08.040

book on Karl Marx. I think he helped introduce me to the complexities of interpreting the early humanistic writings of Karl Marx then being published for the first time. I think he

01:16:08.040 - 01:16:37.080

also encouraged me to apply for a Commonwealth Fund fellowship to study at a university in the United States of America. Undergraduate friends at Oxford, I have mentioned the names of the only two that I have kept up with

01:16:38.820 - 01:16:58.860

Stewart, Hampshire, and Christopher Hill. Keeping up with Stewart Hampshire, was made easier by his immigration to the United States. I do not think that our friendship ever amounted to deep

01:16:59.160 - 01:17:28.830

reciprocal influence. Although I did greatly admire his book on Spinoza, finding in Spinoza, a model for a radical progressive materialist point of view. And already in 1951, drawing attention to the connection between Spinoza and Freud.

01:17:31.230 - 01:17:56.790

It was otherwise with Christopher Hill. He was congenial to me from the start. So lower middle class outsider or intruder into the Oxford establishment. I remember the nonconformist religious atmosphere in his parents home

01:17:56.970 - 01:18:21.630

in New York, when we set out together to walk on the Yorkshire Moore's, by coincidence have faked a fortune. He was not only an intellectual, but like me also a rugby football athlete. We were on the same team when baillio

01:18:21.750 - 01:18:46.110

won the intercollegiate cup at Oxford, it must have been the year 1934. So he was the only one who shared with me membership in three distinct social worlds at Oxford, the rubber heavies, the political radicals, and the intellectual

01:18:46.170 - 01:19:14.700

aesthetic elite, the most important moment in our association and in memory retrospect, one of the high spots of my life was the trip. Christopher and I took together to Germany to learn the language in the summer of 1934, just

01:19:14.700 - 01:19:40.890

after Hitler came to power, going to Freiburg in breisgau. Where we stayed in the home of hair Polish sign my your Alf Hunter, the police chief, an old social democrat, trying to keep his job under the new regime and trying to keep his family

01:19:40.890 - 01:20:04.680

together. When his two sons, along with the vast majority of German youth had lost their heads and hearts to adore Hector. Christopher and I spent beautiful days walking in the Black Forest I can no longer remember any specific topics of

01:20:04.680 - 01:20:29.370

our endless conversations. But I cannot doubt that we reinforced in each other, the attraction to Marxism. It would take a big book to compare and contrast my relation to Marxism was Christopher hills. Seen from the outside, we might seem to have

01:20:29.760 - 01:21:02.460

gone different ways. I began to explore for a passage to a post Marxist world after the defeat in 1948. In the in the presidential election in the United States of America, in which I saw my expectation for mass movement of the left behind

01:21:02.460 - 01:21:25.200

the candidacy of Henry Wallace refuted So, I moved on to a psychoanalytic perspectives in life against death, and even more visionary or meta rational perspectives and loves

01:21:25.200 - 01:21:54.720

body. Christopher Hill stayed with a Marxist framework and spent his life introducing flexibilities subtlety and sophistication into a Marxist interpretation of the 17th century English revolution. But, as he replied to said, the

01:21:54.720 - 01:22:17.310

unseen harmony is stronger than the scene. From his vast array of writings, I pick out too, for their hidden connection with major themes in my work is 1955 essay

01:22:18.060 - 01:22:43.050

on Clarissa Harlow and her times as a brilliant exposition of the connection between economic and sexual exploitation in the modern bourgeois patriarchal family. His masterpiece

01:22:43.980 - 01:23:07.860

on a radical utopian, communal religiosity and ignorant and English Revolution, the world turned upside down 1972 has an uncanny relation to the intoxicated Dionysian

01:23:07.890 - 01:23:40.860

tendencies, erupting in love's body and in the worldwide cultural upheaval of the 1960s. This concludes what I want to attempt in this first installment of memoirs taking the story down to my departure

01:23:40.860 - 01:24:05.190

for the United States in 1936. In the form of an appendix, I want to add more on the Cuban side of the family. This connection was reactivated by a phone call from my uncle Pedro, when we were living in Middletown.

01:24:07.800 - 01:24:31.200

When Castro came to power, he and his family wanted out of Cuba. in Middletown, Connecticut, we gave temporary shelter and hospitality to his two children. Axl and Elsa, who were the forward detachment of

01:24:31.200 - 01:24:56.610

the family immigration. They soon moved on to establish their own lives. Finally, Pedro and his wife, Elena living in Miami. Axl and his family, also in Miami. It also married and living in Los Angeles to see our address book under Pedro sprint

01:24:56.640 - 01:25:25.140

and Elsa Baird. I wrote recently to Pedro asking for help and filling out a picture of my Cuban grandmother, whom I called Abu Alona. For these memoirs. What follows is taken from his amazingly detailed reply. He is now 84 years old. In order to

01:25:25.140 - 01:25:40.710

preserve his narrative intact, I am going to have to put it on a separate tape. What follows

01:25:41.940 - 01:26:05.280

as an appendix to my memoirs is a sketch of my Cuban grandmother's life, supplied to me by my uncle Pedro. In September 1988. My uncle Pedro, then, being 84 years old, was suffering from extreme

01:26:05.310 - 01:26:30.720

degeneration of the eyesight. The memoir about his mother, my grandmother being nevertheless handwritten. Pedro also confessed, and an accompanying letter that he and his wife Elena, Whose Golden wedding had been celebrated in 1986, had

01:26:30.720 - 01:27:01.140

recently and suddenly been divorced. The memorandum, the memorandum about my grandmother is a remarkable document, and I am reading it word for word with a few explanatory modifications. My Cuban grandmother's maiden name was picture Coloma Akin

01:27:01.140 - 01:27:43.050

Taro. She was born on December the 20th 1868 in madruga, Cuba and died on January the first 1963 in Havana, Cuba. Her father, Boss Jose Eduardo Coloma, a Vasquez, born about 1835 in Zoo Yana ZUWAN, a Peru and her mother was Maria

01:27:43.080 - 01:28:22.350

Concepcion cantero. Born about 1846 in a vague La Habana Cuba, Pedro Coloma he can tell those father emigrated from Peru for political reasons and settled in Cuba. He bought a small Sugar Mill near madruga from the widow of the former owner. Some years

01:28:22.350 - 01:28:43.170

later, he lost the mill to the sons of the former owner through litigation. In his marriage with Maria Concepcion cantero there were seven children.

01:28:44.460 - 01:29:06.540

Petra was the first one a German governess from Hamburg was hired. She taught German to Petra, who assimilated it very well. After the loss of the sugar mill, the family

01:29:08.340 - 01:29:34.920

moved to Havana at the age of 15. And thanks to the connection of the governance with the German colony. Pizza was introduced to the German club. Then considered very highly in Cuban society. In in

01:29:34.920 - 01:30:04.380

the German club, she met Richard Guyer, the Secretary of the club. By coincidence, this same post, the Secretary ship of the German club, was occupied by my uncle Pedro himself as he writes in the letter during the period 1932 To 236 and later Still, he

01:30:04.380 - 01:30:33.690

became president of the club till 1965. In the marriage of Petra, and Richard Guyer, there were three children, Richard Margarita, and Carlos Petrus husband, Richard Gaya, died at a young age from a liver disease, probably from drinking. In his

01:30:33.690 - 01:30:58.080

last will, he wished to have the three children educated in Germany. So pitra a widow, left Cuba, about 1896 and went first to son a bear to the house of parents in law. A few years later, she moved

01:30:58.530 - 01:31:16.080

to nearby kobuk intuiting in a larger town, mainly because of better schools and also a high school. There she met Paul schwindt.

01:31:17.520 - 01:31:49.980

A musician, violinist of the thin regionally well known kokuka of theater. They married and had three children. Hans born about 19. One, Manuela born 19, three and died 1978. And Pedro Pablo, my uncle, Pedro, born 1904.

01:31:51.720 - 01:32:04.620

Her husband Porsche event, died suddenly after an ear operation in August of 1904.

01:32:05.940 - 01:32:28.020

Apparently, it was said as a consequence of medical malpractice. The youngest child Pedro was then only five months old. Patria, then only 35 years, was

01:32:29.310 - 01:32:49.860

twice widowed, was left with six children. The eldest, Richard emigrated in 1909. To the United States of America. During and after World War One, he disappeared somehow

01:32:49.860 - 01:33:17.220

and nothing was heard from him anymore, causing much grief to pay for. Many investigations were made to no avail. patron lost almost all her money as a widow that was administered by the city authorities in Coburg because the children

01:33:18.840 - 01:33:40.200

were minors. The appointed custodian had it invested in shares of a company that went bankrupt patron then rented rooms to students, and taught English and French lessons in order to support

01:33:40.200 - 01:34:09.360

herself and her family. During World War One, she accepted a job in the censors office of a prisoner of war camp in London seltzer, a job that lasted until sometime after the war, when she returned

01:34:09.390 - 01:34:42.360

again to cobourg. Margarita had already before world war one left Germany. She had obtained a diploma as a teacher, and gone to Cuba, hired as a governess for a German family. On her way, to Cuba on the boat. She met Norman Brown. They were married

01:34:42.390 - 01:35:10.980

in 1912 in Havana. After a few more years after the end of World War One Patreon decided to return Cuba, taking with her hands and Pedro. We left Hamburg on September the

01:35:10.980 - 01:35:52.470

18th 1924 and arrived in Havana on October the sixth 1924. On board the steamer statelet after living some months with patrias Sister Maria we separated to live in our own rented house. Hans returned to Germany in 1931. Pedro stayed on with his

01:35:52.470 - 01:36:29.310

mother. But in 1934 patron returned again to Germany to help out with Hans in Berlin because Hans was not doing too well at that time. In 1936, Pater returned to Cuba to live with Pedro and his wife, Elena. after Pearl Harbor, and Cuba

01:36:29.310 - 01:36:59.730

declaring war on Germany, Pedro returned to Germany under the protection of the German Embassy, taking Elena and his two children Axel and Elsa with him. January 16 1942. While patron stayed on in Cuba

01:37:01.140 - 01:37:24.780

until June 1943, when she suddenly appeared in Germany, after a more or less adventurous voyage on to Spanish ships. patrons finally landed at the port of keshawn Studios in

01:37:24.780 - 01:38:01.050

Spain, and manage to reach Germany by railroad. patron Pedro then live 75 kilometers south of Berlin in a small village, well protected from the ongoing bombardments. So Pedro and his family took in their mother after the war, exactly on

01:38:01.050 - 01:38:37.650

the ninth of September 1945 they all that is to say Petra, Pedro, Elena, Elsa, and Axl started the extremely risky one year and 12 day trip back to Havana where they arrived on September the 21st 1946. It was a voyage, Pedro says that would require a

01:38:37.650 - 01:39:09.720

book to describe, describe patron suffered frequently from diarrhea and was very weak. Nevertheless, and have bhana she started again to live her normal life, writing and reading very much. In 1962, she became frequently ill and weaker until

01:39:09.750 - 01:39:39.180

on January the first 1963 at 8am. She died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 94. Pedro writes about his mother Petra, Petra distinguished herself always by her intelligence and energy. She

01:39:39.180 - 01:39:57.270

spoke German fluently with hardly a foreign accent. written English was excellent, though not so her pronunciation in French, more or less the same as her English. She liked to read French books.

01:39:58.980 - 01:40:23.490

patron was have a very strong character and not always agreeing with her next of kin and others. Her character was marked by frequent signs of jealousy. Overall, however, she was generally admired by most persons with whom she dealt.

01:40:28.110 - 01:40:49.800

Another note about the German side of the family with whom I have had too little contact. Some of my children Renae, remember that while we were living in Rochester, we were visited by my cousin or not take Guyer along with my aunt Elena

01:40:50.130 - 01:41:25.170

Pedro's wife, and it also Pedro and Elena's daughter. When not to guier is now married. Renata elbows is her married name. Her address is box 1110 D 4540. Len Gary L. West Germany as I read her German writing

01:41:26.640 - 01:41:57.660

it is L e n t e r i e L and D 4540. Yes, it is d 4540. I was uncertain for all. Renata is interested in keeping up family connections and even

01:41:57.660 - 01:42:24.630

came over to Miami for Pedro and Elena's golden wedding. Renata is one of three children of my uncle, Carlos skier. The other two being Carlos and Michael Guyer. We're not take writes me

01:42:25.320 - 01:42:49.830

that I have in Germany, eight cousins with families who have 17 children and three grandchildren. I'm sure she would be warmly hospitable to any communication or visitation

01:42:50.220 - 01:42:53.160

from her American relatives.