Jock had been in danger of missing another ship but he managed
to embark on the S.S. Empress of Canada bound for Montreal, armed
with many small antique silver gifts for friends along the way,
and special ones for his little daughter in Sydney. He rarely
left on any trip without gifts tucked away in his rucksack - that
old sack went everywhere, and always returned loaded with presents.
He was not enthusiastic about the journey but extracted what
amusement he could. Montreal was fun, and especially his friend,
Duncan MacDonald. They travelled to 'the glory of New Hampshire
in the summer, paddled across a lake to a week-end cabin, walked
through lovely old colonial College buildings - all white and
Georgian and wooden - and drank lots of mint juleps and ate bushels
of strawberries.' He wrote that it was a tragedy I was not with
him. I concurred absolutely as I sat surrounded by papers, books,
manuscripts, personal possessions and about forty boxes. After
disposing of this I was about to go to Surrey to look after my
crippled arthritic aunt while her sister took a holiday. Jock
and I had decided to meet in Rome later so I was also preparing
a number of minor broadcasts to pay for the trip. Despite some
help from an Australian friend I was feeling martyred.
There were other more long-term problems to work through. We
needed to find a flat in London to accommodate ourselves and Jock's
mother. This proved part depressing, part amusing. In the fractured
time available I discovered high rents and "key" money
(a lump sum paid for the privilege of entering what was often
a dump). One place made a lasting impression. There were two
adequate bedrooms, a beautiful, spacious living area and a more
than ordinarily cluttered bathroom. 'And where is the kitchen?'
I asked. 'Well, a-a-ctually' said the lady of the establishment,
leading me back to the bathroom 'it's here', removing with a flourish
a wooden board from a small gas stove in the corner and placing
it across the bath. 'That's for chopping things' she said with
satisfaction. Reduced to a spluttered 'how convenient!' I noted
that one could sit on the lavatory and fry eggs. Post-war London
was not worrying about building inspections.
Jock, meantime, was frugally travelling across America in Greyhound
buses, visiting his wartime friends who gave him a royal welcome,
buying me nylons and beguiling bits and pieces unobtainable in
England - and eventually arriving in San Francisco with five cents
in his pocket. He left for New Zealand to visit his friend, Dr
Owen Thomas who had returned to Napier temporarily after getting
his Oxford D. Phil., and finally arrived in Sydney on July 25th.
It was winter. Sydney did not charm him - he found it 'dull,
wet, windy, cold and dirty & I want to get to hell out of
it the minute I can ... I just feel as lonely & nostalgic
as hell.' But the weather improved and my parents' hospitality
mollified him. He saw his little daughter, Nerida, who was now
six. She criticised his accent and his clothing, but was 'so
thrilled to have a Daddy to talk to, & about, at last. She
is incredibly bright, & talks calmly, like a grown-up &
with a frightening logic - made me look quite silly twice!' He
took her out regularly, and once to the zoo with my sister and
brother-in-law. He wrote that she was sweet and 'went for Davey
in a hell of a big way!' The ink of this passage is blotched
and he admits in the margin 'I've just shed a little tear.' Practical
considerations kept him from becoming too engrossed in sadness.
There was the selling of his mother's house, and a journey to
Canberra and Melbourne to see zoologists. In Melbourne he also
saw the painter, William Frater and bought another painting from
him. And there too he had a 'session with Tom Blamey. He's not
changed.'
Back in Sydney he found the problem of his mother's future ease
crystallising in a way he did not like; but could find no alternative
solution. After hearing the difficulties with our housing and
observing her condition he felt impelled to reverse the decision
he had made to take her back to London with him. 'She is much
too shaky, and querulous and generally touchy to fit into a London
flat of the kind it is obvious we'll get - even if we get one
at all in time ... I don't believe that in her present state we
can make her happy and I am terrified of her making us very unhappy.'
The decision was not at all easy and the conveying of it much
less so. Having made it, however, he gave his energy first to
settling his mother and her financial affairs and then to some
important collecting: satin bower birds. He needed experimental
birds in London now that he would be able to arrange for their
care in aviaries where their bower building would not be restricted.
Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney had given them temporary lodging before
and the London Zoo was offering a similar facility. On the first
day of Spring he went down over old tracks to look for them, and
found the bower of an old friend, a bird 'so tame' who
put on a wonderful dancing act for the female, and for him he
thought, for about half an hour. He would not take that bird,
but eventually, after searching in many places, acquired 'two
glorious blue males & 3 green ones.' The green ones were
immature males or females.
Transport back to London exploded with difficulties - and some
disappointment: we could not meet in Rome with a cargo of bower
birds. Furthermore the major airlines looked upon bower birds
as totally inappropriate passengers. My brother-in-law, David
Jamieson, came to the rescue. His brothers ran an air transport
business and he arranged for Jock to fly with them, providing
his schedule was loose enough to allow for waiting in Hong Kong
while pilgrims were flown to Jedda. Marvellous, Jock thought.
He could attend to the birds' voracious appetites and keep a
watch over them. When it came to the point of flying, however,
this unsavoury mess of cages, raucous birds and smelly food did
not appeal to the pilot. A scribbled note to me from Mascot airport
said: 'In Customs - just finished a hell of a battle with Van
Praag, pilot, who doesn't want to take birds. Won it.' Later
he and the wild pilot and racing bike rider got along quite well.
Those birds had been a continuous thread in his research from
the time when he first began to observe their behaviour and display
in a scientific light - as opposed, that is, to the commonly held
belief that their strange bower-building and decorating could
be anthropomorphised into aesthetic or relaxation 'play'. He
had been watching them and publishing work on them since 1931.
In 1942 Display and Bower-building in Bower-birds was
the title of his thesis for the B.Sc. Sydney - much of it written
up in the war zone of New Guinea. And twelve years later, in
1954 he published a book Bower-Birds, Their Display and Breeding
Cycles - A preliminary Statement, which became the basis for
his Doctorate of Science from Oxford University, although a great
deal of other research had been done in the meantime.
It was not just the handsome satin-bird (as the early settlers
called it) of the eastern seaboard in which he was interested
but the whole range of the diverse family of bower-birds - passerine
(perching) birds, about 8 to 15 inches long, which exist only
in Australia and New Guinea. They all build a display ground
and decorate it with objects of their specialised choice; and
do not 'simply accumulate indiscriminately a heap of varied, colourful
rubbish.' Indeed their discrimination is so finely tuned that
they will go to extraordinary lengths to acquire the right colour
- 'an aviculturalist who unwisely tried to keep blue finches in
the same aviary as a satin-bird found that the finches were killed
one by one and taken as decorations to the display ground. Finches
of other colours were not molested.' Their bowers are built of
twigs and always on the ground. The nest, with which it has no
direct connection, is built in a tree. Some paint their bowers
with macerated charcoal or leaves, the satin-bird even makes a
tool from a twig to do this; others decorate their tall (up to
8 feet), maypole-type structures with living orchids. The birds
themselves are strikingly different from each other in their plumage.
Many of the males are outstandingly beautiful - the flashing
dark blue-violet of the satin, the golden bird of the Queensland
rain forests, the regal black and gold regent bird, the spotted
bower-bird with its silvery lilac crest and the great grey of
the dry Australian inland; and in New Guinea, other handsome
members of the family.
It was difficult to acquire specimens of these birds for laboratory
examination. In the preface to his book on them Jock wrote:
'Some of my conclusions are of necessity based on the study of
far too few laboratory specimens ... it is difficult, even if
one felt so inclined, to go about a country killing statistically
relevant numbers of bower-birds during each changing phase of
their display cycles. The habitats of some of them are separated
as widely as London and Moscow. Some of the organs reported on
were secured, almost by lucky chance, at odd times in remote places
during the war when they were crudely preserved in gin or whisky.
(This sacrifice was not as dreadful as might be imagined: a
very small amount of whisky will, in this respect, go a very long
way.)'
The laboratory specimens were essential in order to make the 'series
of histo-physiological studies designed to test the validity of
the 'recreation' hypothesis.'; and 'to reach some generalisation
concerning the nature and function of bower-building and display,
and, if possible, to describe these and associated phenomena in
terms of animal rather than human behaviour.' The book was widely
well reviewed in England, Australia and the Continent in scientific
journals; also in The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald,
etc.. One god-fearing Australian reviewer dismissed the 'microscopic
study' as unnecessary - 'most thinking people, I feel sure, would
regard them [bower-birds] as interesting, but worthless, by-products
of the great process which created man and leave it at that.
The birds are beautiful and worth preserving and their casual
study and appreciation are wonderful relaxation, but who wants
to know the number of red and blue cards respectively which a
Satin bower-bird will carry to its bower?' Very few people probably
- but those few showed considerable interest in the 'microscopic
study'. In Biology, June 1955: 'It is an extremely interesting
and entirely scientific survey of available knowledge. The approach
is twofold, descriptive and experimental. It can be enjoyed simply
as an account of the fascinating behaviour of these birds, ...
Behaviour at display grounds is apparently as characteristic as
plumage, which suggests an interesting potential line of evolutionary
evidence. But it is the explanation of behaviour that interests
most.' And a German reviewer - 'The author, who is both physiologist
and anatomist, as well as researcher on behaviour and field ornithologist,
after lengthy preliminary study had made a compilation and critical
examination of the scattered literature ... and supplemented this
by his own investigations on his own caged satin bower-birds and
by personal communication from research travellers. In this way
a very thorough study has been made of the Eastern Australian
Ptilonorhynchus violacius; it therefore forms at the moment the
pivot of behaviour studies and of investigations in animal psychology.'
This was all four years away, but in 1949 in London, an intense
phase of work on the breeding cycle of various animals was about
to begin, and when the academic year started Jock was plunged
into organisational work and a heavy teaching load. This latter
produced some amusement in the beginning. He approached the laboratory
on Worm Day with a certain trepidation, not having had anything
to do with worms' physiology for some years. 'Sure enough, as
soon as I got through the door up jumped a bright young man who
accosted me: "Sir, what is the function of the dorsal pores?"
He thought back over the years with the speed of lightning without
success and in desperation was about to turn to the old standby
when in doubt: "the function of the blankety blank is obscure."
'But I could see that the little stinker had a text-book open
on the bench before him. If I said the function of the damned
structure was obscure, he would immediately look it up and find
that it had a perfectly well-known function. A brilliant idea
occurred to me: "You've got an authority there on the bench:
why not look it up for yourself?" I smiled. He hadn't
thought of that. He thumbed through the text. "It says
here that the function of the dorsal pores is obscure Sir,"
he said.'
It was a stimulating time, though work was not made easier by
the fact that we had not been able to find suitable accommodation.
We took temporary residence in a furnished apartment in Swiss
Cottage with two Australian friends. They were charming and unobtrusive,
but there was not a great deal of room for most of the space was
taken up by the largest, blackest, most exuberantly decorated
Germanic furniture we had ever seen. I redoubled my efforts to
find something permanent. Eventually we had success - in the
Spring of 1950. In Hampstead, in a small lick of land known as
Parliament Hill, where a line of houses sweeps briefly out onto
the edge of the Heath, was a "lower maisonette" (this
means the lower two floors) in a spacious four story semi-detached
terrace house. It had generous Victorian proportions, many rooms,
the unusual facility of two bathrooms and a garden with high,
warm brick walls. There was a huge black poplar against the sky
and a gate in the wall which led straight onto Hampstead Heath.
We pounced immediately. And a month later we were married -
on May 13th, 1950.
We put our mattress on the floor upstairs, two eighteenth Century
chairs and a table in the middle of the large empty space opening
to the garden, and called up a party. We were married in the
City of London registry office with my sister and my aunt and
our dear friend Spanky Hume - and his new wife Heather who had
been married very differently in St Martin's in the Field, with
Eric Baume giving the bride away and the Lady "Flushbucket"
bestowing enormous panache on the proceedings with glorious jewels
and a hat so large it umbrellered both of us in the church. Jock
and I were dispatched as a marital team with a pleasantly brief
ceremony. A good friend, Cecile Higgs, who later stayed with
us in London, was horrified when she heard I had worn olive green
and gold - 'Green is extremely unlucky!' - but I found
it delightfully lucky for eighteen years. On the way back to
Hampstead we stopped to show Heather the changing of the guard
at Buckingham Palace. Jock watched the guards' officer turn around
in front of us with the embroidery at the back of his jacket vent
flashing in the sun - he felt exuberant and suddenly shouted like
a sergeant major: 'Shiny-arse'. The larrikin was gratified by
a stir of horror among the small crowd of watchers and we went
happily on our way having set the mood for a good party.
Another event gave a different twist to our life barely a month
later. Jock had had more worrying reports about his mother's
misery. He was feeling desperate since she still refused to go
to any other member of the family, so we decided she must come
to us. We believed our relationship was strong enough. Fortunately
we were right. Not that Nin was as 'difficult' as Jock had feared.
It is probable that the move, the act of taking her into his
house and allaying her fears had dissipated many of the negative
aspects of her behaviour which had so upset him in Sydney. Unable
to walk without help she was very much at the mercy of my goodwill,
so it was a brave step on her part too.
For ten years we lived in that house - 25 Tanza Road. It was
on the edge, between city and green breathing space. Through
the windows was a sweep of grass and trees leading up to the hill
where the myth of Guy Fawkes watching the conflagration at Parliament
Hill took shape. He was nowhere near there but it was called
Parliament Hill all the same. The watchers on the hill were now
following kites gliding about in summer breezes and winter winds.
The large black poplar marked ours from all the other identical
semi-detached terraces that lined the hill, their locked gates
opening onto the half-tamed heath. Jock was delighted, marching
around the space - 'We've found a good camp again Jania.'
At the bottom of the road a small train went to Kew Gardens.
Hampstead village spread up the side of the Heath. Buses went
to the city - to the East End and the West. Jock worked in the
East. St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Medical College, along
with their Church and Graveyard, are in the old City of London.
Nearby were St Paul's Cathedral, the Old Bailey and Smithfield
Meat Markets. He loved the old City and came to know it intimately,
fascinated by such people as the 'fevver-pluckers' - a special
group who did nothing but pluck chickens in Smithfield Markets.
It satisfied his nose for history. Many times he came home with
bits of silver or jewellery, sometimes dinner from the markets,
occasionally half a dozen teacups that had taken his fancy. For
a man who could spend months in the bush with nothing but a rucksack,
he was a great collector when even temporarily settled in one
place. And he enjoyed giving. But his collecting got out of
hand sometimes. With antiques he was disciplined, especially
at auctions - he had learnt that lesson early. But later, in
Australia, on the farmlet we bought, his old siege-hoarding country
training came into play. He went off to an auction one day to
buy a few fence posts for repairs. He came home with enough posts
to fence a race-track - and 39 day-old chicks! 'They were such
bargains!' he said, grinning.
London was a cornucopia of offerings for the curious or artistic.
It was impossible to be bored. It was dirty - in winter belching
coal-besmirched smoke, a red mist drawn across the sun and sometimes
thick yellow fog rolling up from the river through every cranny
of the city. It did not matter. Inside the imposing buildings
given over to books, paintings and artistic or historic artefacts
collected (or filched) from around the world, there was stimulation
- often excitement. In summer it bloomed with curiosities; people,
flowers, forests of deck chairs in the parks, ceremonial amusements
for tourists, theatre - every season brought other sensations.
At home we collected more furniture, set aside a room for Jock's
mother and settled down to work and find our centre in this new
environment. After the protected rural peace of Shotover and
comparative academic calm of Oxford it felt as though the world
was lapping about our ears. And we were no longer alone. It
was not just Nin. Other friends came and stayed. London is always
rich with talented and ambitious people jostling for fame. Just
after the war it was a particular magnet. Looking back it seems
to have been quite a feat to keep a peaceful private core among
all the activities and pressure of work in the first years. Jock
valued peaceful domesticity, however strange that may seem to
those who saw only the provocateur. 'A lot of people hadn't any
idea Jock was such a sweet, very gentle, very sympathetic sort
of character' said Geoffrey Dutton ' they thought he was rough
and full of jokes - and abrupt sometimes. He didn't let that
[the other aspects] emerge. He'd stick out his jaw and go for
it.' He enjoyed talk and interaction with other scientists.
A few, such as Julian Huxley who lived only two streets away,
came quite often. He and Jock were a familiar sight sitting in
front of the bay window looking out on the Heath, books and papers
spread around, serious or laughing at their own clever cracks.
They were a powerful couple of characters - their age difference
perhaps muting their foibles. They got along well. Julian thought
Jock was making 'a unique contribution to scientific natural history
and bird ethology' with his dual interests of the laboratory and
the field. He was especially interested when Jock was 'working
on his remarkable book on Bower Birds.' His wife Juliette is
an artist in very many ways, as sculptor, writer, manager of Julian
and inspired hostess. She told me to 'cuddle my children and
don't have a nanny' (we had no intention to acquire a nanny -
but noted her unusual injunction; intellectual and artistic women
benefited enormously from nannies when afforded).
Sean Graham - difficult to contain in a chair, always striding
up and down - brought us news of films and people from West Africa.
There was also a huge coterie of Australian artists, intellectuals,
actors, journalists living in London in the fifties. Somewhere
we met Dr. Derek Denton and his wife Margaret who became friends
and later acquired great distinction in Science and the Australian
Ballet respectively. Another Lindsay rebel, Jack, lived there.
Painters Donald Friend and David Strachan were working there,
and older friends from Jock's days of journalism: Dal Stivens,
who spent many nights working with him on the Telegraph in the
university years, Eric Baume and Rex Rienits - they all spent
varying times living in London. In 1958 Tass (Russell) Drysdale
and his wife Bon, came to live there for a few months with their
children and a nucleus of paintings for a show at the Leicester
Square Gallery in April. Tass was adding to it while painting
in London. Jock commented - 'we have seen some of his newly produced
stuff from time to time; it is of course awfully good but we
wonder whether he will get the squeals of adulation that Nolan
aroused. Nolan slapped the male sob-sisters of Fleet Street with
yellow and green duco and I fear that any Australian who doesn't
go one better will be called a Victorian formalist!' It was at
this time that Jock and Tass began a friendship which lasted until
Jock died.
We got lost in a London fog with Nin (Ninette) and Geoffrey Dutton
in our first autumn. By extraordinary coincidence Geoffrey and
Jock had both been in the clutches of two separate London hospitals
experiencing the exquisite agony of having their anal fistulas
repaired. They were now sitting warily on rubber rings dreaming
of idyllic countryside as Ninette took us all for a drive. I
cannot remember where we were going but there is no possible doubt
we did not arrive. The air thickened to impenetrable yellow as
we became part of a caterpillar with hundreds of lights and no
vision. By the grace of Nin or 'Hughie' or Little Grey Men' we
somehow arrived back in Tanza Road.
The Duttons had taken a flat in Lansdowne Road and one night asked
us over to dinner with Roy Campbell, the South African poet, his
wife Mary and their daughter. Geoffrey imprudently asked Jock
- 'not to mention Catholicism or Franco's Spain. (Fatal thing
to do!) Almost Jock's first remark to the Campbells was "Well,
I've been told not to mention Catholicism or Spain, but I think
Franco's a shit and the Pope's a crook".' Campbell reacted
with surprising amiability, 'just argued, and begged Jock to come
with him to the British Museum and read Vol. 28 of Marx and Engels.'
The evening progressed to less fiery ground - but when we were
all leaving Jock turned to the daughter and said 'Why do you wear
that thing around your neck?' It was a cross. He was sticking
his jaw out and going for it that night.
On July 27th, 1951, our baby daughter, Michelle, was born. Her
birth, after three days of labour was a huge relief to all three
of us. Having taken me to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Jock had
been camping in his sleeping bag in the laboratory in order to
be near the action. Eventually we all recovered and went home.
Owen Thomas had returned from New Zealand amusedly cursing 'striped-panted
bastards' and prophesying doom for the English, and was staying
with us. One day I found the two men in the garden apparently
about to peg our new-born baby to the clothes-line. Steaming
out there I was told they were merely going to test the theory
of a baby's enormous strength in hanging by the fingers like an
ape from a tree. 'Why not?' said Owen 'we'll catch her.' They
were very plausible. She hung on - but the amount of support
given and the time allowed hardly made for a significant scientific
experiment. Jock was entranced by her, but also thought about
his daughter in Australia - 'Nerida continues to bloom & I
hope to have her over here & to have a hand in her development.'
He hoped the news of her half-sister's arrival would be given
carefully - 'it would be perhaps disastrous for Neri to get the
impression that she was being abandoned by her Daddy.'
In this year too - 1951 - Tom Harrisson was back in England from
Borneo. He and Jock talked for long hours in our Hampstead living
room; Tom was often unhappy, almost despairing, with the problems
of his marriage and young son. But they also began to stew up
together another joint project with their usual enthusiasm; they
were like a couple of boys again. This time it was scientific
more than adventurous: they were going to do interesting things
with collaboration on research into the sexual cycle of a little
bird living in almost plague proportions right on the equator
in Tom's patch of Borneo. It did seem like a remarkable opportunity.
Tom wrote: 'I have known 75% of an area's rice crop destroyed
by Munias. It is the major agricultural pest of South East Asia
- and no one has done anything on or about it.' Jock wanted to
discover as he had with Ceylonese bats, whether, on the equator,
birds did breed regularly despite the lack of light fluctuation.
In June 1952, with Tom back in Borneo, he was saying: 'There
is not the least doubt that such an investigation would be worthwhile
and by employing my techniques and your ability to see what is
happening in the environment we can do something together that
will make the whole Hebrides effort look like kid's stuff - which
it was so far as the biological research was concerned.' He was
also asking a lot of questions - and requesting that Tom answer
them 'with a minimum of smut and obscenity. Please, my dear old
cobber, don't think that I've gone respectable on you but I may
want to submit your reply, along with a statement from John, in
application for a London University research grant for say 50
pounds so that we can get about 10 of each sex of at least one
or perhaps two species per month throughout the whole year, dead
on the equator or thereabouts.' Tom's reply hardly fitted the
requirements of a submission for a grant - beginning 'it must
be marvellous to be actually married to you kid, I've just about
had it at 10,000 miles (or is it further than that, I hope?)'
and went on 'Now for your moronic notes on Munias. My dear Bart,
do you realise you are looking at (across, I hope, 10,000 + miles)
the world's number one Munimaniac. I live with them, glare at
them, minute them, eat them. I have played with their doe-eyed
offspring on nest and handled the nursing mothers in pup.' This
was Tom the nature boy having a go at the scientist in his cell.
On Dec. 1st, 1952 Jock wrote to Kuching: 'I send you Episcopal
greetings & the knowledge that I have got 100 pounds for
the investigation.'
All this time Jock had been working with his usual energy. In
May he read a paper at a Conference in Leiden, Holland. It was
received well and he made valuable contacts. Work was going well
generally. Bart's decided to put him up for a full University
of London Chair of Zoology. He thought, however, that he should
probably get a Doctorate of Science before it went before the
Board of pundits.
Another opportunity occurred: 'Most zoologists, when young, want
to write their own textbook. It is a phase which I never passed
through. But, quite by chance, I was offered the editorship of
Vol. 11 (Chordates) of Parker & Haswell! I accepted with
alacrity - & so I have started work, to "physiologise"
this great old book. Some of it will be easy; but some very
tough.' It proved to be a vast work. There were times when we
felt bogged down. I was doing a lot of new illustrations for
it. We worked until midnight or later many nights. Certainly
his own work, two research trips to Uganda and publication of
the book on Bower-birds intervened but it was five years before
he could report, on 11th May, 1956 - 'Last Friday, after working
every night until 3 or 4, I finally got Parker & Haswell to
the publishers. It has meant an enormous amount of work - I have
more than earned the 500 pounds offered me. But it is still the
senior Text book of Zoology in the English language, & its
writing enables me to stay here (with plenty of time for research)
& still not get "typed" as merely a teacher of junior
people.'
All this was true, yet scientific work was advancing at such a
rate in those post-war years it gave Jock a few twinges of regret
about time spent. He was amused - because it was all in the family
- that I received more money for the illustrations than he did
for the writing. But the illustrations were work for him too.
He had to instruct me on detail and watch for my propensity for
careless artistic rather than accurate touches. He was well pleased
when it was over: 'I have redrafted Foster-Cooper's abominable
English, have imparted a functional slant to the whole of Vol.
11, & have tried to bring the bare blood and bones to life.
Also inserted the odd paragraph of a kind that normally would
never appear in a a sober textbook of Zoology.' He sent
thanks to his old teacher E. (Teddy) Briggs: 'I have just finished
re-writing Vol. 11 of Parker & Haswell ... Why to tell you
all about it? Well, I got my first really systematic instruction
in comparative anatomy from you, a student of Haswell's, &
I have never forgotten your kindness to me when I was a completely
obscure youngster in the old Department.'
Early in 1952 the Chair of Zoology at Reading University came
up. Jock decided to apply - 'along with Gip Wells (G.P., son
of H.G. Wells), Dennell, Alister Graham & a lot of lesser
lights. Graham got it. I got on the short list; but Graham
was unbeatable, I should imagine, from the time he entered though
Gip reckoned I had a good chance. Later, & by accident, I
saw the testimonial John Baker wrote in my support. If ever I
had a chance against Graham (which I don't believe I had in 1952)
J.R.B.'s "support" would have wrecked it.'
The "support" was in the form of a referee's report
to the University. These recommendations from experts are necessary
in one's particular field of work; they also give an assessment
of the characteristics they think may fit one for the post. Jock
had thought himself entirely safe, and probably well-served, in
asking John Baker for one. But unbelievably, not only did John
bring up the divorce again but declared he did not know the circumstances
leading to it; and then added an assessment of Jock's alleged
shortcomings as a classical zoologist. He did praise his research
but the other statements in such a reference were extremely damaging.
'Yet we are old, even intimate friends: what Englishman can
you trust?! I am glad however, that it's happened now & not
later.' In the matter of trust Jock was referring back to the
Dakin incident. Dakin, an Englishman, had been his Professor
but not his good friend. It seemed incredible that such a disadvantage
could emanate from his old friend. 'Janey says "Jealousy"
- Tommy [Dr Owen Thomas] says "I knew you were off-side there,
boy!".'
It is true Jock's confidence in his own abilities and his unconventional
behaviour undoubtedly riled some people (although he would never
have thought John to be one of them) but jealousy was the more
probable spark on this occasion. As Jock demonstrated years before,
John was a complex and reclusive character. He had claimed he
did not want a professorship - only the chance to do research,
and one would have assumed that a Readership at Oxford was the
crowning opportunity for this. He had been glad to be Jock's
supervisor, to help him put his foot on the ladder - but to see
him climb higher may have been another matter; a professorship,
however disparaged, was a sacred cow in the academic world. Jock
wondered why he agreed to do it if he could not be genuinely supportive;
it almost looked like malice, which seemed unthinkable. Whatever
his motives, Jock was deeply hurt by such an underhand stab.
It is common practice for referees' reports to be confidential
to the institution offering the job; but it is also common practice
for any person asked for support to refuse it if they have reservations
concerning the other's suitability for the position. That incident
caused Jock always to give a copy of his testimonial to anyone
he was supporting for an academic post.
There was more professional knifing hot on the heels of this,
although he treated it lightly. Ironically it involved views
he had put forward in support of John Baker's work on the Golgi
body. Owen Thomas who was also working on it had just come back
from seeing Professor Gatenby in Dublin. Thomas was 'as scared
as hell that Gatenby will discredit both John and myself. He
is going to sue John too - so he says.' This referred to an article
Jock had written for Science Progress on this rather esoteric
cytological subject - the Golgi body. His article supported the
research John Baker and Owen Thomas were doing in Oxford which
appeared to negate some of the findings of Professor Gatenby.
Thomas reported Gatenby was furious - 'He will see to it that
I [Jock] "never get a better job than I've got." Actually
I quite like him although he has added me to his list - a long
list - of hates.' Baker persisted in his research and years later,
in 1958, wrote to Jock: 'Never forget that you were once in the
fray yourself - luckily for you (or by insight) on the right side!'
When I showed this letter to Professor Thomas he wrote 'the electron
microscope has settled some points but we are just as uncertain
of others. The more that is solved the more new questions are
raised and the final truth recedes. This is true of all science.'
On May 26th, 1952 Jock's mother died. It was two years since
she had come to live with us, and for the last several months
her heart had been failing. She died after being in a coma for
three days and having been very ill for three weeks. Jock hurried
home, and sitting beside the still frail body, found a great wave
of emotion suffucing him - 'there is something curious and special
about death - even when reason tells one that it is good that
it has at last taken place.' He pondered later whether the so
deeply gripping emotion was 'an innate & hereditary response
to the death of a mother & how much was the result of conditioning
- a response to the loss of my mother to whom I was always intimately
attached & to whom I owed so much in the past; & again
how much of it was due to the physical presence of the still,
frail form beside me. A mixture of all three?' He was deeply
affected by her death and was going through the guilt which tells
one that there was so much more one could have done to make for
happiness in the last years. And he further upset because ' ...
Two fragile lives went out together - Janey had a miscarriage,
no doubt caused by lifting Nin when nurse was absent & by
the crisis in general during the last awful few days.'
We were both physically and emotionally exhausted - especially
Jock. A gloom took hold of him. The events of the last two months
had been gruelling. We decided to take advantage of an offer
to exchange houses for a month with friends in Oxford. This was
a good move. It was a beautiful summer. With our baby daughter
we relaxed in familiar places and Jock went back to London ready
to work.
A year later, on May 6th, 1953 our son was born. He appeared
precipitously at one o'clock in the morning, causing Jock, anticipating
a long wait in his laboratory, to leap out of his sleeping bag
as he had just wriggled into it, to try and find the right 'phone
in the dark. He was delighted. We called him Donald Merton -
Jock, true to his word, wished to honour the College eight; we
saw no disadvantage in that good old Anglo-Saxon name, though
predictably our son did.
Just after this he suddenly announced: 'I have withdrawn my candidature
for Sydney D.Sc..' This application for a Sydney Doctorate of
Science had replaced his earlier intention to apply for one from
the University of London. A Doctorate is the higher degree in
one's chosen discipline (as opposed to the more all-embracing
title of Doctor of Philosophy) which can only be obtained from
most universities with a considerable body of published research
papers. It is not an essential in seeking the more important
academic jobs, but helps significantly to prove the worth of one's
research. Jock was now annoyed with Sydney: 'They wanted five
bound copies pre-examination (this requirement not in the
calendar - merely a convention). Told them to send it back.
Should not have sent it there in the first place - will wait for
publication of book - accepted by Oxford [University Press] -
& send to Oxford or London.' The old dichotomy was working
again. There had been the emotional pull to be connected with
Sydney University, but knowing the academic world as he did he
was aware that an Oxford D.Sc. in particular, although harder
to get, would be more valuable professionally. It was unlikely
this act endeared him to Sydney University, however.
He began a concentrated effort to finish the book for publication.
On August 3rd, the morning of going off to an international congress
of Zoology in Copenhagen ('I never felt less like going anywhere
- almost. That's what happy domesticity has done for me!') he
noted: 'Last night at 12.45 Jania and I finished off the last
map of that damned bower-bird book. It was becoming rather a
bore.' But the Copenhagen congress turned out to be stimulating.
After a couple of days he wrote to me: 'I have met the people
I wanted to see - Mayr, who is a pleasant, egotistical bloke (but
whom I like) & Stresemann, the Berliner, who is a most charming
person. I found my ideas & theirs agreed on all points, which
astonished me: tho' I reflected that perhaps I shouldn't have
been [astonished] because they are both v. v. good! I expect
they went away thinking that Marshall was a pleasant egotistical
bloke.'
Work ran on. In the next two or three years he published a considerable
body of research, building up an international reputation. He
returned to a curious asymmetric reaction he had noted years before
in the uterine horns of the giant fruit-bat, worked on the influence
of drought and rainfall on Australian desert birds, on the sexual
cycle and display in the great grey bower bird, on the effects
of hypophysectomy on internal testis rhythm in birds and mammals;
he even made a small contribution on lung cancer to the British
Medical Journal, based on observations of his own physiological
reactions to heavy smoking which concerned the role of nasopharyngeal
cilia. He made quite a number of experiments on himself and then
took to a pipe. This last was a side-line, but in 1955 he read
a paper to the Society for Endocrinology in which, although
it was concerned with male birds, gives some overview of the thrust
of his work:
'I follow my late illustrious Cambridge namesake [F.H.A. Marshall,
1936] in believing that the primary organ of periodicity is the
gonad ... To me the most plausible view of the regulation of sexual
periodicity is to think of the gonad as a sort of cog-wheel which
is seasonally engaged, so to speak, by various environmental teeth,
which differ in combination and significance from species to species.
The sensitivity of a species to these combined stimuli and its
specific neuroendocrine response to them have no doubt evolved
by natural selection. A seasonally recurring complex or succession
of stimuli that is physiologically significant to a given species
will lead in the individual to gonadotrophin release and response
by the testis.'
For many years, since the Canadian zoologist Rowan had found that
he could bring captive migratory finches and crows near to breeding
condition by means of increased light, simply from electric bulbs,
photo stimulation had been considered a paramount regulator of
animal breeding periodicity. Plainly Jock did not agree with
this. He believed that an artificial picture had been built up
by an imbalance of laboratory work to conditions in the natural
environment, and that photo periodicity was a grossly over-rated
factor in the regulation of breeding seasons. Just one example
was a small bat studied by the Oxford expedition to the New Hebrides
'which hangs all day in a pitch-black cave of almost constant
temperature and had one of the sharpest breeding seasons yet described.'
For various kinds of experimental work photo stimulation was
an almost indispensable tool but 'it is true to say that of the
remarkable number of photostimulation experiments that have been
designed for the study of breeding seasons, including migration,
few have had much in common with what normally happens in the
environment with its complex and changing pattern of important
events such as fluctuating temperature, the presence and acquisition
of a mate, the taking up and defence of territory and the abundance,
or otherwise, of traditional food.'
The book Bower-Birds was published in 1954. He submitted
it and twenty papers for an Oxford University Doctorate of Science
which was conferred in 1956. He also began thinking, about this
time, on the necessity for a comprehensive book on the biology
of birds as he became increasingly 'bored with the frequent need
to go back into the Victorian & Edwardian literature, or to
translate from another language, whenever I wanted a relatively
simple piece of information about a muscle, bone, the blood, gut,
or sense organs of birds.' Furthermore no simple volume contained
accounts of the many, often exciting, ornithological discoveries
made during the previous thirty years. He did not want to desert
his laboratory in order to write it himself so began writing to
friends and colleagues who might contribute chapters for such
a book. Over some years numbers of distinguished biologists undertook
this task under his editorship and in 1960 Biology and Comparative
Physiology of Birds was published by Academic Press in two
volumes.