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The Spike or Victoria College Review 1946

On Living in an Ivory Tower

On Living in an Ivory Tower

Sanderson and I have been discussing our project for some years now. What with the present craze for atoms and anarchy, we have been thinking of shifting from our digs and building for ourselves in a more comfortable quarter. The shortage of materials prevents anything spectacular, you understand, but I know a man who knows a clerk in the Housing Department, and a bottle of Scotch might achieve wonders. Sanderson had lunch with a contractor on Tuesday and he will guarantee the job if we can convince the Union that it is a water-tower for the new suburb. Actually, there are a number of suitable buildings vacant these days. The tenants, chiefly scientist, have moved down closer to the other workers. If the worst came to the worst, we can always rent one of these, though it mightn't have all the amenities.

From the very beginning we have been agreed on the general conception of the building. The first necessity, of course, is that it should be as high as possible. "The higher," as Sanderson says, "the fewer," and that's certainly so. We can't go to the skyscraper size, but a couple of hundred feet on the top of Mt. Victoria should do the trick. There wouldn't be many who could look down on us there, and we'd be well above the rest of the hoi polloi. Sanderson suggested that we would get a nasty bump if we fell off, which is true enough, but one must take certain risks. The overwhelming advantage, to my mind, is the broad view of the city, with no distractions from noisy trams and smelly people. I've always liked a scene with a broad sweep, where you're not diverted by unnecessary detail from the true nature of things. In fact, I'm thinking of installing a telescope, the wrong way round, so as to enclose the whole universe at glance, "macrocosm in the microcosm" as you might say. This, with a microscope for inspecting our navels, and lots of notebooks to write down our introspections, would be just the equipment we need to write our book on the Cosmic Process.

The height of our tower has one serious page 15 complication, though. The wind would be strong, and the air rather cold. A blast of cold, pure air is just the thing to clear the head and refresh the soul, and purity, after all, was one of our chief aims, but a Wellington southerly is more likely to end in bronchitis than anything else. We are going to instal a hot air machine which will collect the pure air, warm it, sterilise it, and distribute it throughtout our chamber. Thus conditioned in an atmosphere of hot, or rather, warm air, we shall be well suited for our job of collating the universal.

Having settled that, the next thing to decide was the shape of the tower. We argued quite a lot shape of the tower. We argued quite a lot about this. I maintained that it must be round, because, as Plato himself said: "It is self-evident that the Archetypal Circle is more rotundly round than any other curve in the Eternal Mind," and our tower must obviously have the most perfectly pure conceivable form, Sanderson cavilled at that, saying it would cost twice as much and he wasn't made of money and anyway a square would be much of money and anyway a square would be much more comfortable. Finally, he gave in, murmuring something about a sphere being the most perfect form of the lot (but then it wouldn't be a tower, would it?)

The material was fixed for us, ab initio. It had to be ivory. Nothing else could give us so pure a colour, so perfect a lustre, such excellent protection from the outside world. I've always liked ivory. It is hard and smooth it doesn't give way to the cruel blows of Fortune. Its whiteness is the garb of purity. the quitessence of light, the synthesis of all colour in one colour, an "omnia in unum," so to speak. Of course, it becomes yellow with age, but that has probably got some deep philosophical significance, although I can't pick it for the moment.

Furniture was a real problem, and I must confess that here we were forced to change our original plans. We were all for ivory furniture, bare ivory floors, and so on, at first, but when we realised how uncomfortable they would be, we weren't so keen. "It's not," I said, "as if we were Yogis, mortifying the flesh by sleeping on beds of nails. What shall we achieve by it? Better the scheme of "mens sana in corpore sono," to look after our animal comforts that our minds may be free tosoar above the realms of mere flesh." We chewed it over for some time, and finally decided on feather mattresses, comfortable armchairs, warm carpets, etc. It is, I'll admit, a difficult moral problem, but on the whole I think we took the right decision. It's impossible for ordinary mortals (and that, after all, is what we are) to have inspired thoughts if they can't sleep properly, or have no comfortable seats or are in danger of catching pneumonia from a cold stone floor. Some mystics, like Buddha and St. Francis, decided the other way, and went the whole hog and tried to forget the body by neglecting it. Well, they certainly achieved something, but that was a long time ago, and we are in a more enlightened age, and there doesn't seem much point in civilisation if we don't take what we can get out of it.

The same argument applied when we came to discussing our new way of life. It would obviously be foolish to deny ourselves those good things to eat and drink which we enjoy so much and which are so good for one's health. Of course, with the war and so on it's rather difficult to get delicacies these days, but a little cash expended in the right direction goes a long way if you know the score, and we have already laid in stocks of tinned foods, choice wines, etc. We are going to employ a housekeeper and cook, who will send up our meals. Talking of housekeepers reminds me of the woman problem. Naturally, neither of us intends to marry. It's so demoralising, so material, to have a woman fussing around, and children chattering and screeching when one is settling the problem of the Universe. One could never get away from them. Yet woman is the complement of man, the antithesis, the contradiction, without which the complete synthesis, the unbiassed, detached, entirety is impossible. To do without them completely would be fatal. We decided to arrange for some young women of our acquaintance, women with whose cultured spirit we were fully en rapport, to come when we needed them to achieve our totality. On this point Sanderson and I were fully in agreement.

Well, as I say, we have now completed our plans and are ready to star. Of course, it's going to cost a lot of money, but then you see Sanderson has got a private income, and my uncle (he was a diamond buyer) has just died and left me a pretty tidy sum. We wouldn't consider it if we weren't fairly comfortably off. After all, it requires some courage to cut oneself off from the world, as we intend, in the honest search after Truth; without means, I should say, the ivory tower would look rather like a dungeon. However, the only thing that really worries us is that we shan't be able to make the building really strong—in the next war they may try dropping atomic bombs and if Wellington... .

J.M.Z.