[Aztlan] H.B.Nicholson Memorial

[Sam Edgerton]

Dear Listeros: Here's a lovely memorial to Nick that his family has asked 
me to post on AZTLAN
Sam Edgerton


7 March, 2007



Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Students of Nick:



In Bruce's (and our) previous letter/biography/commemoration of our beloved 
father, your dear friend Nick, we mentioned how he passed away peacefully 
amidst his cherished library, which literally had come to surround his 
bed.  As we draw together to remember him and celebrate his remarkable 
life, we now want to add a few more loving reflections, memories, and 
anecdotes about our incredibly erudite but also exceptionally compassionate 
and generous papà (and recently, grandfather).



Nick had a special penchant for coining and sharing little catch-phrases, 
some admittedly more amusing than others, but all bearing his own 
distinctive stamp.  One of these was it takes a dedicated nut,which he used 
to refer to scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.  He would 
apply the phrase to a third person, but of course the true, wonderful 
dedicated nutwas Nick himself!  He literally gave his life to his passion 
for intellectual inquiry and expression, but best of all, he transmitted 
this curiosity and enthusiasm to so many others.  A lover of poetry too, he 
fittingly fulfilled Chaucer's description of the Clerk of Oxenford(that 
glorious English university town which Nick knew and loved quite well), who 
on bookes and on lernyngespent his stipend, of studie took he moost care 
and most heed,and gladly would he lerne and gladly teach.  As his children, 
we had the extraordinary good luck to benefit, for many decades, from 
Nick's glad learning and teaching.  Both he and our beloved, dearly 
departed mother Margaret had an unquenchable love of adventurous 
travelling, and took us on trips that in themselves formed a priceless 
education.  To mention just two memorable examples, we trundled into 
station wagons in 1966 and 1970, both times braving tropical thunderstorms, 
rivers in flood, washed-out or cattle-blocked roads, irregularly operating 
ferries, and a host of other difficulties in our indefatigable mission to 
visit such remote Mexican sites (back then) as Palenque, Chichen Itza, and 
Uxmal.



As you all know, Nick had a lively wit and irrepressible sense of humor.  A 
gifted storyteller, he enlivened our journeys with tales of his own earlier 
ones, of his encounters with an entire gallery of intriguing characters, 
like the hustling bustlingwaiters of La Casa de Azulejos restaurante, or 
the overly suspicious train conductor of Cold War Vienna. Just to focus on 
the 1970's, Nick was also sighted riding a camel near the Giza pyramids, 
entering the time-machine of ancient Herculaneum, removing his shoes at the 
Blue Mosque of Istanbul, reciting The Rubayat of Omar Khayam in the gardens 
of Isfahan, and climbing and climbing through the rose-red canyons of Petra 
to arrive at a high cliff terrace and gaze, Moses-like, toward the Promised 
Land far beyond.  With his amazing memory, he brought back innumerable 
tales and impressions from such travels, that through his telling 
entertained as well as enlightened so many others.  Some of you may have 
heard his amusing story of our Egyptian tour guide, who told us not to 
visit the Ramesseum because it was just a bunch of old ruins,but was 
overruled by the ever-determined Nick.   The guide became duly humbled when 
Nick  identified all the deities carved on that temple's venerable walls, 
and then deftly recited Shelley's Ozmandias,inspired by the colossal 
wreckof that very site.  In short, no adventure film could come close to 
matching Nick's incredible life of travel and learning.  Take that, Indiana 
Jones, you never drove through the entire Middle East, including Iran and 
Iraq, in a little blue Citroen 2CV deux chevaux!  Nor did you share slide 
after slide and comical anecdote after anecdote from such adventures: if 
Garcia Marquez proposes living life to tell stories about it, then Nick 
realized that proposal as well as anyone we have ever met.



So much to celebrate, then, regarding our father:  his warmth and 
congeniality, his ability to make others feel at home in his wide world of 
scholarly study, his true dedication to almost everything he put his open 
and nimble mind to.  Age could not wither nor custom stale him in the 
least, and he undertook new projects, and kept exploring new possibilities 
well into his seventies.  As was mentioned before, he was a true lover of 
Shakespeare's plays (many passages of which he knew by heart), and as 
recently as 2002 he attended, notwithstanding the efforts of an officious 
usher to block his entry, an outstanding all-male performance of Twelfth 
Night at the restored Globe Theatre in Southwark, England.  We can see him 
even now, enthusiastically remarking that this show was "wonderful," and 
made him laugh, think, and see the play in an entirely new light.



Wonder, enthusiasm, novelty, light, and delight:  all these were Nick, and 
all these he gave us, and will forever give us, in abundance.  Saki may 
turn down an empty glass, but our cup runneth over, the cup of loving and 
delicious insight we have been so blessed to inherit from Nick



Fly on, O rare plumed serpent!



Papà, we love you,