Harry's Absence
by Jonathan Scott[ Non-Fiction ]
On February 1, 1960, Harry Scott, conscientious objector, psychologist, and mountaineer, was killed while climbing Mt. Cook. Thirty-five years later, his son set out to look for him. Funny, moving, and beautifully written, this is the story of a father's absence, told partly through the rich and exciting mix of biography, autobiography, and intellectual and social history. HARRY'S ABSENCE is a passionately argued book about New Zealand, addressing the distinction between nationalism and love of country. Finally, it is a recovery, from death, of reasons for living.
Preface
'Meantime,' wrote Harry in 1945, 'I pondered on the problem of life and death.' My first debt is to my father, not only for the person he was, but for the record which remains. It is no small consolation to understand his death in the context of such a rich absorption by the question of living.
This book is not a biography, or autobiography, but a more specific emotional reconstruction. It is the story of a death: its background and aftermath, causes and consequences, told through the medium of life. Death is a living thing, and this is the biography of one.
One aspect of death in life is grief, which is not only a response to, but species of it. A second is that pushing at the boundaries of experience which involves 'the risking of premature death in living'. As our pre-modern ancestors understood, death and birth do not simply mark the termini of a life but occur continually throughout it. The clerical profession ministered to one as the medical profession does now to the other. This is our relationship to time, and we must hope, for every death, for something to be born.
This book emerged from a personal loss. I remember particularly my walks around the Peak district, grief and beauty face to face, no way through from one to the other. Sharp mornings lay in soft light, the smell of the country in the air; dumb animals stared uncomprehending across dry stone walls and I back at them. Without Janet Reibstein I can imagine no such sally back toward a life even then visibly worth having.
I am grateful for the forbearance of Margaret, Rachel and Kate, who appear here in my story, not theirs. They could all write their own, and were all affected at least as deeply as myself by the loss of Harry. I am indebted to Kate for guidance with the psychology, Rachel for editorial advice, and Margaret for generous cooperation. To them the book is dedicated, with gratitude and love.
Warm thanks for their friendship and criticism belong to Tim Hochstrasser, Nancy Sturman, Di and John Morrow, David and Andrea Thomson, Colin and Sandra Davis, John Morrill, Brian Dobbie, Miles and Maria Fairburn, Mike Braddick, Kathleen Bennett, Patrick and Liz Collinson, Charles Taylor, Roger Paulin, Fergus Barrowman and Adrian Johns. I am deeply grateful to Alan Williams, Colin Bennett and Julia Sutherland for their generosity and hospitality. For all of these things and others I am indebted to Anne, with whom I remember Jane.
The writing of this book began on the island of Lesbos in 1993. To the exhilaration caused by the discovery of my father must be attributed (among other things) the most expensive telephone call ever made from a certain hotel near the beautiful town of Mythimna (Molivos). Not for the first time I wish to record my gratitude to Greece for olives, vines, wild country, light and sea.