The Price of Altruism (38 page)

Quickly he set about putting out old fires. “I write to you in very great shame,” he apologized in a letter to Rosemarie. To his old Harvard friend Henry Noel, with whom his communication had soured, he wrote to make amends and explain his new path in life. In his vision Jesus had whispered to him: “Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.” Henry was in France now with his family, living Luke 6:30 too, only from the receiving rather than the giving end, he wrote back with a smile. Still, he was glad about his friend’s sudden change of tone. However much or little it might be like Dr. Skinner’s rats or pigeons, he thought, George’s choice to turn to
agape
was still a source of volition other than God’s will.
⁴³

Whether George would agree was questionable, though reborn a new person, this time he’d keep his thoughts to himself. He was attending a new church now, Saint Mark’s Clerkenwell at Myddelton Square, about a forty-minute walk from Little Titchfield. The first time he went there, he wrote to Kathleen, as he was getting close to the white stone West Tower,

What this meant was clear to him: Suffering lay ahead. There was as much volition in this, he knew, as there was water in a desert—Henry’s sigh of relief notwithstanding. But George would accept his fate with open arms.

Then, with no words of introduction, he wrote to Julia in America, beginning dramatically: “Dear Julia, Would you be willing to marry me again?”

It was perhaps not the most attractive proposal, but George meant it from the bottom of his heart. His plan was for Julia to come to join him in the summer, he hoped with Annamarie, Kathleen, and Dom. The lease for the flat at Little Titchfield was ending on June 24, but until then they could live together, somewhat cramped, perhaps, but as one big happy family. Then he and Julia could finally go for a proper honeymoon in France, something they had had neither time nor means for back in the summer of 1947. Then they could return to Britain to travel with the kids to the “bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond” and to Tintagel in Cornwall, where King Arthur is supposed to have been born, and to Canterbury and “lots of other places.” All the love and affection would help bury things past.

Julia wasn’t sure about it all, she said to him in the first phone conversation they’d had since the sixties. But she agreed to come over in the summer, promises for a second wedding withheld. The pronouncements that Jesus wanted him to follow the path of suffering were worrying her. In truth, there was more to worry about than she knew of. For, opening his heart and his Little Titchfield apartment, George was already walking deep on the path of
agape
.
⁴⁶

It began in late March, around the beer- and piss-reeking, rat-infested corners of Euston Station and Soho Square. It was there that he was seeking out London’s homeless and hapless dregs, men and women, young and old, down on their luck, those whom life had not smiled upon. “My name is George,” he’d introduce himself. “Is there any way I can help you?”

Homelessness had been a part of London’s landscape from its Roman beginnings. In modern times, made doubly visible by photography and statistics and sustained by often harsh Victorian poor-law institutions and a smattering of charities, vagrants became a celebrated if regretted part of the scenery. Disguised as a down-and-out sailor, the American writer Jack London painted a dismal portrait of life in the East End in the 1903 best seller
The People of the Abyss
. There was Poplar workhouse, or “the spike,” as the shelter of last resort was known. There was “the Peg,” the Salvation Army barracks on Blackfriars Road in Southwark, where the homeless could turn up on a Sunday morning and, if they were lucky, be given a free breakfast. And out on the streets there were knifings, and broken beer bottles, and the stench of death, and the silence of suffering, and the battle for a bed at night, and the constant mumbling under the breath, audible but opaque, punctuated by a barrage of expletives.
⁴⁷

In the winter of 1910 it was estimated that 2,747 people were sleeping rough in London. That number swelled after the Great War, when former servicemen, many of them disabled and disfigured, were reduced to begging on the streets. Air raids on the capital during World War II left an estimated one in six of Greater London’s population homeless at some point, and squatting became a way of finding a home that would become part of the city in the years ahead. In 1966 the television drama
Cathy Come Home
, about a working-class single mother living in the streets, made a profound impact on a sentimental public, leading to the formation of the housing charities Shelter and Crisis, and the night shelter for homeless teenagers in Soho, Centrepoint, in 1969. No one knew precisely their number, but by the time George made his way to Euston Station from Little Titchfield in the spring of 1973, an estimated 40 percent of England and Wales’s homeless—wet, grimy, and often inebriated—were living in and around the city.
⁴⁸

Soon he learned that there were many ways he could help them: A quid here, a sandwich there, a cup of hot cider, a word to a policeman. Most of all, though, he could offer room and board, and, beginning in April, they were flocking to his home. There was Peg Leg Pete, a temperamental redhead who lost his limb clambering over a wall while being pursued—falling and catching his leg on a hook, where he remained suspended until the police arrived. There was Smoky (real name: Trevor Russell), a hardened alcoholic who had been in and out of prison more than thirty times. Smoky “was tough and ready to fight any man of any size,” George wrote to a friend; he couldn’t stay at any hostel in London, tales of his disturbances having become legion. There were Bernardo and Chrissy, a sweet couple who hadn’t had much luck and drank a lot. There was Aberdeen, another alcoholic with a mental hospital record, and a karate expert to boot. To all who stayed longer than overnight, George provided keys. At one point there were four men staying at Little Titchfield who had either done time or were wanted by the police and who were alcoholics or who had a record of insanity, each with his own keys to the place. One of the men had been in prison specifically for burglary.
⁴⁹

Friends and acquaintances were starting to worry. He had written to Henry Noel that before his love conversion he had been “vile” and was trying to make amends by following “the path of total depravity.” Henry replied that it struck him that there might be a peculiar kind of pride in judging ourselves with more harshness than God Himself judges us. “Let God be the final judge—don’t try to out-God God.” The duty of charity, he reminded his friend, applied first and foremost to ourselves; George needed to snap out of this obvious “state of extreme.” “The other Price” too, the psychiatrist John Price from Maudsley, wrote kindly to offer George to come stay with his family in Northumberland. This might help, he hinted gently, “to give you a wider perspective during a time of decision-making.” Tatiana, for her part, wondered whether if he was feeding every man he himself was not growing hungry. Even Edison, all the way from the Village and still engrossed in Iyengar lotus-position yoga, implored his brother not to be so “damn self-critical. I really am fond of you,” he wrote in a rare exhibition of brotherly affection.
⁵⁰

But as usual George Price was on a mission, fighting off any feelings of fear of the strange men in his apartment: “I told myself that if I was obeying Jesus, he would protect me against serious harm,” he wrote. And, it soon became apparent, Jesus really was protecting him: These were rustlers and cheats, men, it seemed, with little moral compunction. And yet, from April through June, besides a bottle of wine that was later replaced, nothing was ever stolen. The place was filled with heavy smokers, most of whom were semi- or fully drunk much of the time, but there was never a fire. The neighbors in the flat below were not too happy about what was happening above, but following George’s gentle explanations “soon became friends again.”
⁵¹
Sure, he was giving out money freely now and leaving very little for himself. Sure, he was being taken advantage of. And sure, few of the men cared a hoot about him or would help him if he needed them. But this only strengthened his resolve.

Catching wind of the fact that George spent much of his time on the streets now, giving to the derelicts he encountered, the Reverend R. F. H. Howarth from All Souls wrote to say that experience teaches that giving money to down-and-outs “is seldom more than an easy way out for ourselves.” But George’s experience was different; this was no version, however sophisticated, of a Trivers tit-for-tat. To Henry Noel’s concerned letters he replied that no, he had not deliberately put himself in a time and place where he would be asked for help. In fact he dreaded going down to Soho Square, where some of the fiercest and most violent hoboes held sway. But then he’d read 1 Thessalonians, and hear Jesus whispering to him: “Go back to Soho Square this evening.”
⁵²

Soon he would have to leave his apartment. Suffering was on its way. Whether, as he’d written to Kathleen in March, there was ever really pleasure to be found in pain seemed beside the point now.
⁵³
Aquinas, Hume, Adam Smith and the Vietnam War notwithstanding, after fifty-one years, finally, George was learning to love.

George Price in his University College, London, office, 1973

T
oward the end of April 1973 the grant came through. Beginning May 1 George would be reappointed associate research fellow at the Galton, with a salary of £3,195 for a year of research on genetic polymorphism, “no fixed hours of attendance” stipulated. It was exceptional for the Medical Research Council to award one-year grants, not to mention for the Galton to demand so little; CABS’s imploring had evidently done some swaying. But in truth genetic polymorphism in nature was rather far from his mind now. In May he wrote to Julia that he was planning to find a large derelict house once the lease ended on June 24, and to start a “Jesus people” commune with twenty to twenty-five people. Clearly her lack of response to his marriage proposal meant that she wasn’t very interested. But she should still come along with the girls and Dom in the summer to stay with him there. He had no doubt that she’d be fond of Bernardo and Chrissy in particular.
¹

To Mr. Norman Ingram-Smith of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields he wrote in more detail about his wish to help solve the “bag-storage-place-to-wash-and-change-clothes problem” of London’s homeless. There were two explicitly Christian communes in the city: the Children of God commune on Walterton Road and the Jesus Family commune in South Norwood. Both were full-time evangelizing outfits, and both prohibited drinking and smoking: “That’s fine for those who want that, but there are many people in London who enjoy helping others but who smoke and drink moderately and want to hold jobs. So there is a need for communes or co-ops with more permissive rules.”
²

The idea was to start such a commune by renting out a derelict house (not squatting; after all, the people living there would all have jobs, and it wouldn’t be fair not to pay rent), and opening it up as a haven for homeless who needed help. Each member would decide what part of his or her possessions and income were turned over for common use to the commune. Particular effort would be made to get some members with skills useful for rehabilitating old houses: plumb-ers, electricians, and so on. It would be a happy and friendly place, “with a bit of style and swing to it,” for advertising to help make communal life seem attractive. Members would be encouraged to invite guests for meals and to stay overnight or longer. But this would not be a one-off; it was part of a much bigger plan:

Back in Little Titchfield, he was learning lessons of love from his lodgers. In the living room he had built an altar, covered by a tablecloth and with a wooden cross standing atop it. It was rather simple, George thought, but he had plans for a more splendid one, with a skirt of black velvet and a top cloth of white velvet, surrounded on the sides and back by drapes of blue velvet. Then one day Bernardo asked for some Vaseline for his hair, and, apparently not noticing that it was an altar, wiped his greasy hands on its cloth, and—to George’s horror—hung his underpants on the cross. Just as he was about to give him a piece of his mind, George came to see that this was Jesus telling him—through Bernardo—that the rich velvet altar cloths were the wrong way, the old way, the Old Testament way, whereas giving good clothes that he himself wanted to needy strangers was the right way, the way of Jesus the Lord.
⁴

As much as living with strange men was educating him, the lease came to an end on June 24, and, feeling utterly unworthy yet to follow Jesus’ true path of suffering, the least George could do was not to renew it. The peculiar American had been a godsend to the homeless of Euston Station and Soho Square for the past three months, but he had completely failed to plan ahead for his own sake. Now George was going to be homeless himself.

The first few nights he slept in his office at the Galton, but clearly this was no kind of solution. Ursula Mittwoch, a colleague at the department, offered that George stay with her family and do some tutoring for their teenage daughter who was just then preparing for an English exam. She remembered his stay with fondness. Her daughter loved George’s clarity and marveled at how he seemed to know all the poems she was supposed to learn. Everyone enjoyed his good humor at breakfast and dinner, his utter considerateness, tidiness, and gentle manner. Even George himself was making a good time of it. “Th us far I have enjoyed being homeless,” he wrote to his old family friend Dr. Gilfillan back in the United States on July 3. “It is a good way to get acquainted with people.”
⁵

But the Mittwochs’ was only a short-term solution, as were fleeting stays at other friends’ houses from the Galton. He’d moved most of his books and papers to Wolfson House, the abode of the Department of Human Genetics and Biometry at 4 Stephenson Way. But soon George was beginning to see that this wasn’t going to be all that easy. Before he could create his “Jesus people” commune, he would need to find a place to sleep.

Having to abandon George’s apartment, too, Smoky was now once again behind bars. From Her Majesty’s Prison, Pentonville, on Caledonian Road, he wrote on lined prison notepaper to thank George for the radio he had sent him, but also to explain his own philosophy. George might think that Jesus intervenes in people’s lives, but Smoky was less salutary. “Lets be fair,” he wrote, “if we do wrong we have to take the consequences.” George’s noble generosity was admirable, but in the end the price might be too steep:

Selfless friendship was difficult to come by.

He was praying that George and Peg Leg Pete find a place to rest their heads again. George was a rarity: a true and honest altruist. He needed to watch out for himself. “It’s not very nice in the Bruce House,” Smoky warned him of the Centrepoint homeless hostel on the aptly onomatopoeic Drury Lane. “Pleased don’t sleep that low!” Then he added, “I would suggest that you post the cash to me in your next letter, if you can manage say £10 to £15.”
⁷

Thinking little of his own problems, George had lately started to help old people around Myddleton Square near Saint Mark’s Church, nursing them or running errands during the day and sleeping over nights when family found it difficult to stay. Muriel Challenger, a congregation member, acted as the go-between. There was the frail octogenarian Mrs. Rose on Chadwell Street, who wasn’t doing all that well, and Mrs. Abercrombie, likewise, on Goswell Road. After explaining that he shouldn’t worry if the old ladies sometimes seemed “changeable,” Muriel wrote to George:

George had seen Julia briefly when she visited in the beginning of August. She’d come over, she made clear, to buy some antique jewelry and small collectibles to sell at weekend antique markets back in Michigan. It was a sad coda to the hopeful days all those years ago, when World War II was ending and the future lay ahead. If there had been some miniscule, wild glimmer of hope that they should get back together despite all their history, it had to be put to rest now. With George homeless and making radical selflessness his life’s philosophy, it was clear to Julia that her relationship with that handsome man she had encountered at the Met Lab, the promising scientist who had become the father of her daughters twenty-five years before, was finally, irreversibly dead.
⁹

George was staying at Bruce House now. Some nights a violent drunk would fight him over his cubicle, and always he would yield with a smile. During the day he’d walk to Euston Station and Piccadilly Circus to meet winos and beggars and see how he could help them. He was wearing a large aluminum cross against his chest, and twice already, he thought, it had come in handy. When he’d chanced upon two cases of police brutality to homeless men he confronted the coppers demanding that they stop. Each time he was told gruffly that it was none of his business, and each time he remarked that it was. Then, on both occasions, the policemen took a look at his cross and, silently if not entirely respectfully, retreated.
¹⁰

He had testified at Smoky’s trial, but the testimony failed to shorten the sentence. Never mind, George wrote encouragingly, this would give Smoky time to make a true promise to Christ. “You asked me for suggestions about what to do when you get out,” he offered.

Instead George thought that he should take one or two drinks soon after he got out, that he should right away, even now in prison, stop attending church services, and that he should abandon ideas of getting a proper job and try to help the homeless instead. The reasons for all this (“by the way,” George wrote, “this is very unconventional advice”) were first, that not drinking entirely would only inevitably lead to a powerful urge for the bottle; second, that going to church was much less important than serving Jesus by loving and helping others; and third, that since he knew the streets better than anybody, helping homeless down-and-outs like himself would be the job he could accomplish with greatest skill.

Sealing the letter and addressing it to Pentonville, George might really have written the advice to himself.

Back in October when he’d expressed to Maynard Smith his joy over the outcome of their joint paper on the logic of animal conflict, he had paused to relate an embarrassing misgiving. “There is one matter that has to be brought up now and on which I need to hear from you before trying any re-writing,” he wrote. “This is a rather unhappy matter to mention. It involves Bill Hamilton.”
¹²

What George was referring to was something Hamilton had once told him regarding the refereeing of his 1964 paper on the evolution of social behavior. Usually gentle and pacific, Hamilton felt that he’d been terribly wronged, and continued to harbor a burning grudge against Maynard Smith after all these years. For Maynard Smith had been the referee of his paper, Hamilton had learned, the one responsible for asking to split it into two separate papers—a request that eventually held up publication for close to nine months. This wouldn’t have been so terrible if Maynard Smith himself had not hurried in the interim to publish the paper in
Nature
contra Wynne-Edwards, in which he coined the term “kin selection” for the very first time. After all, “kin selection” was a pilfering of Hamilton’s idea of inclusive fitness; like King David with Uriah and Bathsheba, Maynard Smith had not only sent Hamilton away but absconded in the meantime with his beloved!

When George found out that Maynard Smith had been the
Nature
referee who read his
own
paper on antlers in 1968, he remembered Hamilton’s ire and jumped to similar conclusions. Once again, it seemed, John had held up a new idea and in the meantime somehow found himself interested in the very same topic. But then George met Maynard Smith and saw what a kind and gentle person he was. Hamilton’s anger, he now believed, had to be the result of some misunderstanding. This was the reason why, when Maynard Smith wrote to him in 1971 wanting to cite his antlers paper, George replied, “If one mentions an ‘unpublished manuscript’ then someone may wonder about whether it was used with permission, but if you speak of ‘discussion’ then no such suspicion arises.” Having seen for himself that John was a good man, he wanted to protect him from a possible second accusation.