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Authors: Nicholas Mosley
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matter of statistical analysis.'
My mother would say 'I understand that it is a matter of all sorts of mutations being latent and potentially available in the gene pool.'
My father would say 'Lovely bits of mummy and daddy swimming in the gene pool.'
My mother would say 'I do think it a pity that you cannot be serious with Max.'
My father would say 'You can use such images if you like. But such language does not help explanation.'
My mother would look away as if she were someone in a fairy story imprisoned in a castle.
There were times, nearly always when my father was away, when a group of my mother's friends came down from London. They would emerge on to the lawn having walked perhaps from the station; they were unlike my father's friends in that they did not make much noise. There was a rather ancient young man with steel spectacles and beard; a much younger-looking young man in white flannels who danced up and down in front of him. There were two tall ladies in floppy hats and with beads who went and gazed at the herbaceous border. Then they would all sit in deckchairs and seem to be waiting to be photographed. When they talked it was as if they were trying out lines for a play.
After they had gone, and my father had come home, he would say 'And how are the Wombsburys?'
My mother would say 'Very well, thank you.'
My father would say 'Bedded any good boys lately?'
My mother would say 'Please don't talk like that in front of Max.'
I would want to say - But of course he can talk like that in front of me!
My father once said to my mother 'If I were you, I'd watch out for them having a go at Max.' My mother got up and left the table.
I suppose I wondered why my father and my mother went on at each other like this; but their style seemed to be just part of the grown-up world. There was all the battling and jockeying for position. I would wonder - This is something to do with the needs of natural selection?
Quite often I went through to talk to Mrs Elgin and Watson in the kitchen. In their separate world they would be banging pots and pans about and getting on with polishing the silver.
I would say 'Who do you like best, my father's or my mother's friends?'
Mrs Elgin would say 'I've got something better to do all day than think about things like that!'
I once said 'I think that man with the beard is going to ask the man in white flannels to marry him.'
Watson said 'One day the wind will change and you won't be able to get rid of those ideas!'
I would think - Oh one day will I find someone with whom talk is not a testing or a battle?
Then sometime in 1923 (this was the summer of my eleventh birthday) there appeared on the Cambridge scene - I mean by 'Cambridge scene' not only the academics in their lecture-rooms and laboratories but also, on this occasion at least, the concourse on my father's lawn - a biologist from Vienna called Kammerer. The story of Kammerer is quite well known; but I have this particular memory of him among the men in white flannels and knickerbockers and the croquet hoops on our lawn. Kammerer was a thin, youngish middle-aged man with a high forehead and brushed-back hair; he wore a dark suit of a strangely hairy material. His eyes were alert and watchful; he seemed puzzled, yet not put out by the things going on around him. When my father introduced him to my mother, he kissed her hand. Then he held on to her hand for a moment, as if his attention had been caught by something just behind her eyes. My mother put one foot behind the other and rubbed her ankle with it; it was almost as if she were doing a curtsey.
I thought - But he is like someone come down from a strange planet: a mutation?
My father stood hitting a tennis racket against his leg.
Now what I had heard of this Dr Kammerer was that my father looked on him as a great enemy: they had been having some dispute about the nature of genetic inheritance. Dr Kammerer (so I had understood from my father) was a heretic - something
My mother would say 'I understand that it is a matter of all sorts of mutations being latent and potentially available in the gene pool.'
My father would say 'Lovely bits of mummy and daddy swimming in the gene pool.'
My mother would say 'I do think it a pity that you cannot be serious with Max.'
My father would say 'You can use such images if you like. But such language does not help explanation.'
My mother would look away as if she were someone in a fairy story imprisoned in a castle.
There were times, nearly always when my father was away, when a group of my mother's friends came down from London. They would emerge on to the lawn having walked perhaps from the station; they were unlike my father's friends in that they did not make much noise. There was a rather ancient young man with steel spectacles and beard; a much younger-looking young man in white flannels who danced up and down in front of him. There were two tall ladies in floppy hats and with beads who went and gazed at the herbaceous border. Then they would all sit in deckchairs and seem to be waiting to be photographed. When they talked it was as if they were trying out lines for a play.
After they had gone, and my father had come home, he would say 'And how are the Wombsburys?'
My mother would say 'Very well, thank you.'
My father would say 'Bedded any good boys lately?'
My mother would say 'Please don't talk like that in front of Max.'
I would want to say - But of course he can talk like that in front of me!
My father once said to my mother 'If I were you, I'd watch out for them having a go at Max.' My mother got up and left the table.
I suppose I wondered why my father and my mother went on at each other like this; but their style seemed to be just part of the grown-up world. There was all the battling and jockeying for position. I would wonder - This is something to do with the needs of natural selection?
Quite often I went through to talk to Mrs Elgin and Watson in the kitchen. In their separate world they would be banging pots and pans about and getting on with polishing the silver.
I would say 'Who do you like best, my father's or my mother's friends?'
Mrs Elgin would say 'I've got something better to do all day than think about things like that!'
I once said 'I think that man with the beard is going to ask the man in white flannels to marry him.'
Watson said 'One day the wind will change and you won't be able to get rid of those ideas!'
I would think - Oh one day will I find someone with whom talk is not a testing or a battle?
Then sometime in 1923 (this was the summer of my eleventh birthday) there appeared on the Cambridge scene - I mean by 'Cambridge scene' not only the academics in their lecture-rooms and laboratories but also, on this occasion at least, the concourse on my father's lawn - a biologist from Vienna called Kammerer. The story of Kammerer is quite well known; but I have this particular memory of him among the men in white flannels and knickerbockers and the croquet hoops on our lawn. Kammerer was a thin, youngish middle-aged man with a high forehead and brushed-back hair; he wore a dark suit of a strangely hairy material. His eyes were alert and watchful; he seemed puzzled, yet not put out by the things going on around him. When my father introduced him to my mother, he kissed her hand. Then he held on to her hand for a moment, as if his attention had been caught by something just behind her eyes. My mother put one foot behind the other and rubbed her ankle with it; it was almost as if she were doing a curtsey.
I thought - But he is like someone come down from a strange planet: a mutation?
My father stood hitting a tennis racket against his leg.
Now what I had heard of this Dr Kammerer was that my father looked on him as a great enemy: they had been having some dispute about the nature of genetic inheritance. Dr Kammerer (so I had understood from my father) was a heretic - something
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