Science in the Soul

by Richard Dawkins

  O my beloved father: John Dawkins, 1915–2010*1

  MY FATHER, CLINTON JOHN DAWKINS, who has died peacefully of old age, lived his ninety-five years to the full and packed an enormous amount into them.

  He was born in Mandalay in 1915, the eldest of three talented brothers, all of whom were to follow their father and grandfather into the colonial service. John’s boyhood hobby of pressing flowers, reinforced by a famous biology teacher (A. G. Lowndes of Marlborough), led him to read botany at Oxford, and thence to study tropical agriculture at Cambridge and ICTU (Trinidad) in preparation for posting to Nyasaland as a junior agricultural officer. Immediately before leaving for Africa, he married my mother, Jean Ladner. She followed him soon afterwards and they began an idyllic married life at various remote agricultural stations before he was called up for wartime service in the King’s African Rifles (KAR). John wangled permission to travel up to Kenya under his own steam rather than with the regimental convoy, which enabled Jean to accompany him – illegally, which I guess illegitimizes my own birth in Nairobi.*2

  John’s post-war work as an agricultural officer back in Nyasaland was interrupted when he received an unexpected legacy from a very distant cousin. Over Norton Park had been owned by the Dawkins family since the 1720s, and Hereward Dawkins, casting around the family tree for a Dawkins heir, could find none closer than the young agricultural officer in Nyasaland, whom he had never met and who had never heard of him.

  Hereward’s gamble paid off in spades. The young couple decided to leave Africa and run Over Norton Park as a commercial farm rather than as a gentleman’s estate. Against great odds (and discouraging advice from family and family solicitor) they succeeded, and they could fairly be said to have saved the family inheritance.

  They turned the big house into flats, specializing in colonial servants sent ‘home’ on leave. Tractors didn’t have cabs in those days, and John, wearing his old KAR hat (think Australian bushwhacker) could be heard across two fields bellowing the psalms at the top of his voice (‘Moab was my washpot’) on his diminutive Ferguson tractor (just as well it was diminutive, since he once contrived to run himself over with it).

  Equally diminutive were the Jersey cows that graced the parkland. Their (now unfashionably) rich milk was separated into cream, which supplied most of the Oxford colleges and lots of shops and restaurants, while, in a neat display of what John called ‘music and movement’, the skim milk nourished the large herd of Over Norton pigs. The cream separation itself involved a virtuoso display of John’s characteristic Heath Robinson*3 ingenuity, lashed up with binder twine – the inspiration for a wonderful verse composed by the long-serving pig-man: ‘With clouds of steam and lights that flash, / the scheme is most giganto, / When churns take wings on nylon slings / Like fairies at the panto.’

  John didn’t limit his binder-twine ingenuity to his farming activities. Throughout his life he took up one creative hobby after another, and they all benefited from his resourcefulness with red string and dirty old scrap metal. Each Christmas there would be a new crop of home-made presents, beginning with the toys he made for me and my sister in Africa, and moving on to equally beguiling presents for grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, his special art form being the use of two projectors to ‘dissolve’ pictures into carefully matched images in sequence. Each sequence had a theme, and his themes ranged from autumn leaves, through his beloved Ireland, to abstract art created by photographing the spectral patterns lurking in the deep interiors of cut-glass decanter stoppers. He automated the dissolving process by making his own ‘iris diaphragms’ for the alternating projectors, held together with rubber bands. Inexpensive and very effective.*4

  In his nineties John slowed down and his memory slipped away. But he accepted old age with the same generous grace as had attended his active years. He and Jean, who survives him, celebrated their seventieth wedding anniversary last year in a splendid family party. He learned to laugh at his infirmities with a benign cheerfulness that inspired deep love in their large extended family, including nine great-grandchildren, living in four separate houses all within the dry stone Cotswold walls of Over Norton Park – the ancestral home that he and Jean*5 had saved.

  * * *

  *1 I hope it will not be seen as self-indulgence to include two family memorials. They are not directly connected with science but, in the sense in which I can be said to have a soul, they are connected with mine. My father and his two brothers all influenced me in their different ways. This first piece is the obituary which I published in the Independent, 11 December 2010.

  *2 Her journal of this journey and her subsequent life as an army camp follower in Kenya and Uganda makes entertaining reading, and I quoted passages from it in my first memoir, An Appetite for Wonder.

  *3 For the American equivalent, think Rube Goldberg.

  *4 Nowadays, of course, it would be done by computer.

  *5 She celebrated her hundredth birthday a few days before I write this footnote.

  More than my uncle: A. F. ‘Bill’ Dawkins, 1916–2009*1

  IN 1972, THE British government was trying to find a solution to the problem that was then Rhodesia. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, appointed a Royal Commission, under Lord Pearce, to tour the villages and byways of Rhodesia, trying to canvass popular opinion. The commissioners were old colonial types who, it was rightly supposed, had the necessary experience. Bill Dawkins was a natural for the Pearce Commission, and he was duly called out of retirement.

  At that time, my Oxford college had an ancient and garrulous old classics don, living in, who had spent much of his life closely associated with the colonial service. Sir Christopher became obsessed with the Pearce Commission, and especially obsessed with Bill, probably because the BBC had taken to using his handsome features as their icon for that item on the news each night. As Lalla might have put it, Bill was excellent casting for the role. Although he had never met Bill, Sir Christopher clearly felt he knew him, as a kind of epitome of imperial uprightness and strength of character. This showed itself in such remarks as, ‘Dawkins’ uncle would soon put a stop to that.’ Or: ‘I’d like to see anyone try to pull a fast one on Dawkins’ uncle. Ha!’

  The Pearce Commissioners were sent out to tour the country in pairs, with an entourage, and Bill was paired with another old colonial called Burkinshaw. True to Bill’s iconic status, the BBC news cameras chose to follow Dawkins and Burkinshaw on one of these fact-finding missions, and Sir Christopher was agog in front of the television screen. I vividly remember his summation, the next day, in his distinctive old raconteur’s voice: ‘About Burkinshaw I will say nothing. Dawkins, however, is obviously accustomed to commanding men.’

  David Attenborough told me he had exactly the same impression of Bill, and he drew himself up to his full height and pulled a realistically imperious face to illustrate the point. He had stayed with Bill and Diana while on a filming trip to Sierra Leone in 1954, and they remained friends thereafter.

  I can’t imagine anybody ever calling Bill either Arthur or Francis, although A.F. suited him well enough. Throughout his life, he was never called anything but Bill, which dated from babyhood when he was said to resemble Bill the Lizard in Alice in Wonderland. I looked up to him from the first day I met him. It was 1946, I was five years old and in the bath in the family house at Mullion. Bill must have just arrived from Africa, and my father brought his younger brother in to see me. I was awed by this tall, handsome figure, with black hair and moustache, blue eyes, and a strong military bearing. I looked up to him throughout my life, as a shining example of all that was good about the British in Africa. There was, of course, quite a bit that was bad about the British in Africa. But the good was very very good, and Bill was one of the best.

  He was a notable athlete. At the prep school that I attended some twenty-five years after him, I remember my family pride at seeing his name on the roll of honour as the
holder of the school record for the one hundred yards. This speed obviously stood him in good stead later when, in the early stages of the war, he played rugby for the Army. I managed to track down a report of 22 April 1940, from the Times rugby correspondent, of what must have been an exciting match between the army and the Great Britain team, which the army won. Late in the game, it transpired that:

  The Army passing remained ragged, but Dawkins and Wooller, by sheer dash and ability to pick up on the run, soon reminded Great Britain that these two players alone would take a lot of stopping given half a chance. First, Dawkins, at a great pace, sent Wooller striding for the line, with a stupendous dive-over at the finish. Next, Wooller sent in Dawkins.

  Evidently the speed that won Bill the school record for the hundred-yard dash had not deserted him, and ‘dash’ was clearly still the right word. ‘Great pace’, ‘sheer dash’ and ‘obviously accustomed to commanding men…’ But these phrases, impressive as they are, may represent the least of the qualities that we remember today. Here is a letter from a gentle and loving father, to six-year-old Penny.

  Do you remember the Morning Glory outside the house and sometimes we used to count the flowers on my way to the office and the most we ever got to was 54. Well, today there were 91 all on one side. Have you read this all without any help, because I have not used any long words like ANTI­DIS­ESTABLISHMENT­ARIANISM, HAVE I?…Lots of Love XXXX from Daddy

  I know people who would have given their eye teeth for a father like that, let alone a stepfather.

  Bill was born in Burma in 1916. While his parents were still out there, he and his elder brother John were sent to boarding school in England, and spent their holidays with grandparents here in Devon, which is presumably when he acquired his love of this beautiful county.

  By coincidence he was later to find himself back in Burma for the whole of the war, fighting the Japanese as an officer in the Sierra Leone Regiment, for it was British practice to use tropical soldiers in tropical theatres of war. He rose to the rank of major, and was mentioned in despatches.*2

  He came to love the Sierra Leone people through commanding them in war; and after the war, when he followed the khaki-shorted family tradition of joining the colonial service, he applied to go to Sierra Leone, where he was promoted to district commissioner in 1950.

  It was a tough job, and he occasionally had to quell disturbances and riots, armed with nothing more than his innate air of being ‘accustomed to commanding men’. The riots were not aimed at the colonial government but were to do with fighting between rival tribes. Bill, the district commissioner, went striding in and read the Riot Act. Not metaphorically read the Riot Act: he literally read the Riot Act, every word of it. (I imagine the text as sewn into the lining of his pith helmet.) During one riot, Bill picked up an injured man and carried him to safety. The rioters tried to persuade him to put the man down, so that they could continue beating him up. Bill refused, knowing that, so long as he was carrying him, they wouldn’t dare to hurt him. This curiously surreal approach to rioting reached its climax when, in the middle of one riot, everything suddenly went quiet as somebody shouted that ‘The DC he done tire,’ and a table and chair were lowered on a rope, from an upper window. According to Penny, who told me this story, a bottle of beer was solemnly placed on the table, and Bill was invited to sit down and drink the beer. This he did. Whereupon the table and chair were hauled upstairs again, and the riot resumed as if nothing had happened.

  During another riot, one of the Africans was heard to shout these words of reassurance to everyone who could hear above the hubbub: ‘It’s all right everybody, everything will soon be all right, Major Donkins has arrived.’ Presumably this was said by one of his wartime soldiers from Burma days, because Bill would never have used his military rank in peacetime. His name was widely mispronounced in Sierra Leone as Donkins. And on a later occasion, a letter addressed to ‘The Colonial Donkey, Freetown’, was successfully delivered.

  Here’s another letter to Bill from that period, dated 22 November 1954. It has nothing to do with riots, but is a letter of farewell from a grateful African (with an agenda). It read as follows:

  22nd November 1954

  My Dear Sir,

  Farewell faithful friend, I must now bid adieu to these joys and pleasures I have tasted with you. We have laboured together united in heart but now we must close and soon we must part. My heart sinked within me to bid you adieu. Though absent in body I am with you in prayer that I will meet and work under you some where some how.

  As the dearest friend of Mankind that is Jesus gave his body and blood as token and rememberance to his disciples that they remember him, so also I want you to give a token and that is a Permitt to purchase a single barrel shot gun…

  It is always hard to make a new acquaintance. If I therefore leave the matter untouched it will then take some years. This matter however is suitable for this occasion as it will be a rememberance. I shall remember you through the Gun.

  With every respect and honour to you Sir

  I am

  Your Obedient Servant

  Self-serving though this letter may be, the affection and respect shine through, and we may be sure that that part, at least, was sincere.

  Bill’s success as a DC was recognized in 1956, when he received an unexpected and rather glamorous promotion: seconded to run the West Indian island of Montserrat. The whole family moved to Government House on this tiny island, where Bill was, not quite literally, monarch of all he surveyed. It was then a paradise, before the catastrophes of Hurricane Hugo and the terrible volcano eruption that laid waste to the island, where Thomas and Judith still loyally soldier on. Bill was the Queen’s Official Representative, so they had the Crown on their car instead of an ordinary number plate, and a flag on the bonnet, which was unfurled only when ‘His Honour’ was actually in the car. Diana played the role of consort, and we may be sure she played it to the full: Patron of the Girl Guides, opening fetes and bazaars, and lots more. It must have seemed very different from the jungles of Sierra Leone. And Diana would have been brilliant at it, as she was in all other aspects of their life together. Bill played cricket for Montserrat against other West Indian islands, and was actually quite badly injured while keeping wicket.

  Following the Montserrat interlude, when Bill’s secondment came to an end, he was offered another West Indian Island, Grenada, but instead he characteristically opted to return to Africa, where the challenge was tougher and the need greater. He went back to Sierra Leone, now raised to the rank of provincial commissioner. At the end of this period, when Sierra Leone gained independence, he was again offered a West Indian island: Governor of St Vincent. As a full governorship, this would have carried a knighthood. However, mindful that his father, my grandfather, was ageing, and that Penny, at Cambridge, and Thomas, at Marlborough, might need a home base in England, he and Diana decided that he would retire from the colonial service and take a job as a schoolmaster.

  He had read mathematical mods at Balliol, and so was equipped to teach mathematics. This he did, with great success, at Brentwood School. His dark good looks must, by then, have matured into something more formidable, for his nickname at Brentwood was Dracula. Or perhaps this was just a reference to his ability to keep order in class, a quality that is not universal among schoolmasters. Yet again, he was ‘accustomed to commanding men’.

  Air of command and military bearing be blowed. There are greater qualities to admire. Bill was a loving husband, brother, father, grandfather and…uncle. Uncle Bill was more than my uncle, he was my godfather. In later life he laughingly said failed godfather, but with hindsight I think he did take a more than merely avuncular interest in my welfare. Either that, or he was just immensely kind to everyone. Which, now that I think about it, he was.

  Towards the end of his life, he gave me one godfatherly piece of advice. He probably said it to others, but when he said it to me it was with a piercing look in those blue eyes, filled with wisdom and
experience, which told me this was going to be a serious warning for a godson. ‘You do know, don’t you? Old age is a bugger.’

  Well, he is liberated from that now, and at peace. He may have been accustomed to commanding men, but he was loved by them too. He was loved by everyone who knew him. He left the world a better place than he found it – several different places around the world. We mourn him. But, at the same time, we rejoice in him, and what he has left behind.

  AFTERWORD

  My father’s youngest brother, Colyear, was academically the cleverest of the three. I didn’t have the opportunity to write his obituary, but I dedicated River Out of Eden to the memory of ‘Henry Colyear Dawkins (1921–1992), Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford: a master of the art of making things clear’. Two anecdotes are worth adding here by way of illuminating his character. One is taken from the obituary by his forester colleague Robert Plumptre. While on a troopship in the war, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Colyear constructed a home-made sextant in order to discover where they were (which the soldiers were not allowed to know, for security reasons). The instrument was confiscated and he was briefly suspected of being a spy.