Encounter with Dr. Nicoll

As I write these words, I realise that I have reached a resting place in my life, where there is no longer any urgency. I have come to a point where I can afford to ignore the hands of the clock for long enough to look back and try to discover what events have had a lasting significance for me. One such event immediately comes to mind. It had the quality of immense significance even at the time it happened and the importance of its effect upon my life and upon my thinking has not diminished with the passing of the years.

In 1945 I had the great good fortune to meet Dr Maurice Nicoll, the most remarkable man I have ever known. Because of one chance remark I made to an acquaintance on a railway journey, a remark about wanting to resolve my faith, I was singled out, as it were, to meet 'the doctor'. At that time, Dr Nicoll lived in a large country house in Hertfordshire, between two villages, one with the magical name of Stansted Mountfitchet and the other with the unattractive name of Ugley.

It was at the village inn that I first met Dr Nicoll. He was a man of less than medium height, with a rosy, impish face and very dear, searching eyes. He wore a cap and an old-fashioned tweed cape. There was a group of people in the pub, talking idly among themselves when Dr Nicoll was silent, but silent and alert and listening as soon as he spoke. He said a few words to me and began to fill his pipe. I ordered a glass of beer and politely asked the doctor if he would join me. He frowned slightly and shook his head. Then he did something which I was to see him do many hundreds of times. He struck a match and was about to apply it to his pipe when, as if struck by a sudden thought, he took the pipe from his mouth and began to speak while the match burned slowly away. He shook it out hurriedly when the flame was too near to his fingers and, having completed the remark he was making, he then replaced the pipe in his mouth and struck another match. To my amusement, the same ritual was followed aud I marvel that he ever succeeded in lighting that pipe.

I am satisfied that Dr Nicoll knew nothing about me on the occasion of that first meeting. I think that I said very little and what he said to me I have forgotten. But a few moments after my arrival, a woman came into the bar and greeted him. He introduced me to her and volunteered the information that she was, by profession, an opera singer. 'Mr Blackhall is a poet,' he told her and he turned and winked at me.

We all went to the house for lunch and afterwards indulged in what might be described as extra-mural activities. There was a guitar class, some people were doing woodcarving, another group were painting and several were engaged in household duties. I accompanied Dr Nicoll to the workshop, where he was endeavouring to construct a simple toy which could probably be purchased for about two shillings. He had a childlike interest in things of this kind and his particular toy was the familiar apparatus of a figure in a glass bowl which, when agitated, reproduced the appearance of a snowstorm. The bowl was filled with a solution of glycerine in which small fragments of mica were in suspension. A small plaster figure was fastened on to a cork, which was then inserted in the aperture of the globe containing the solution and sealed with paraffin wax. Oiled silk was then tightly bound round the neck of the globe. After all this, we found that it leaked.

'In this Work,' he said, 'we speak of a number one man as a person whose centre of gravity is in the instinctive- moving centre. A number two man is one who functions principally in emotional centre and a number three man is primarily intellectual. A number four man uses all his centres for their proper functions and he is called Balanced Man. A number five man is what we call in the Work a Conscious Man.' Then he added, suddenly, 'You don't understand what I'm talking about.'

In the evening, we all assembled in a large room of the house and one of the group read a paper by Dr Nicoll. The subject I distinctly remember, was 'Negative emotions', which we were told actuated all our behaviour. The expression was new to me but its meaning was obvious. During the discussion the door opened and Dr Nicoll came in and sat at the table by the side of the man who had read the paper. Everyone was silent and Dr Nicoll looked round the room with that twinkle in his eye which was so characteristic and endearing. He dealt with the questions which had been asked and one could not fail to be impressed by his air of quiet authority. But he was not always quiet. He lambasted people who asked what he called 'formatory' questions. I remember vividly one thing he said on that occasion.

Dr Nicoll had a great sense of fun and always impressed upon us that nothing was to be taken too heavily. An example of this light touch was afforded me when I was coming away from the house that evening. Dr Nicoll was standing near the door and he stepped forward and shook hands with me.

Shortly afterwards, Dr Nicoll moved to Great Amwell House near Hertford and I rarely missed a weekend there until his death in 1953. Recently I met someone from the village of Great Amwell and the conversation came round to the doctor who used to live at the 'Big House'.

'It was a clinic for alcoholics,' I was told. 'The doctor used to have the house full of them, every weekend. They used to go down to the local but they were only allowed one drink.' Dr Nicoll would have been vastly amused by this.

Occasionally, he would 'attack' one or other of us, telling his victim, bluntly and forcibly, exactly what was wrong with him and exactly why he was not making progress in the Work. He would launch his tirade in front of the whole group and everyone felt for the object of his attack and each one of us dreaded that it might be his turn next. For some reason it was never my turn, and many of the people who were there in those days have since commented on his kindness towards me. It has often been suggested that he may have had some inkling that I was later to face that shattering crisis in my life. I am content to count it as one of the great blessings of my life that he was so good to me.

After the more or less formal meetings on Saturdays and Sundays, some fifty or sixty of us would sing choruses from 'The Messiah' or 'The Creation', or we would chant Psalms or rehearse Christmas carols, according to the time of year. We would then saunter along to Dr Nicoll's room and, if he were entertaining that evening, we would join him in a glass of claret and hear him at his scintillating best.

It is not my purpose here to give an exposition of the system which Dr Nicoll taught and lived. But its impact upon me is a part of my story. Let me record that I found nothing in it at variance with those beliefs and convictions to which I have already given expression in this book. In fact, during those wonderful years when I was close to Dr Nicoll, I found much and much which helped me to interpret the teachings of the Christian Gospel and apply them to my own life.

The emphasis was always on applying the Work to oneself. It was pre-eminently about human relationships. When we had learned to observe our own negative emotions, our own unpleasant manifestations, only then could we allow other people to have theirs. One of the revealing things which Dr Nicoll said was that 'Bear ye one another's burdens' did not mean helping lame dogs over stiles. lt meant 'Bear ye the burden of one another'.

'Never sigh about the Work,' he told us on more than one occasion. 'Never say "Oh! it is so difficult". Of course it is difficult. It is difficult for you and it is difficult for me.' Then, with sudden vehemence, 'Damn you! that is why it is called "Work".'

When I first took my wife to Great Amwell House and she met Dr Nicoll for the first time, he did one of those inexplicable things which, in him, we had come to regard as normal behaviour. A number of us had assembled in the doctor's room and he was in top form, striking many matches but seldom achieving the object of lighting his pipe. At one point he took a pack of playing cards, shuffled them and laid them on the table.

'What's the top card, Blackhall?' he asked me. I don't know how I could be expected to know; the cards were face down. I realised that it would be completely unsatisfactory, from the point of view of entertainment value, to make the obvious and truthful answer, 'How the hell should I know?' So I played up and had a stab at it.

'Jack of spades,' I ventured. Dr Nicoll turned up the card. It was the five of diamonds. 'You are not intuitive,' he said, 'but your wife is.' He shuffled the pack again and laid them face down on the table. To my wife's complete surprise, he addressed himself to her.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly and looked helplessly at me. I could only shrug back.

"...Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel; - till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so!..."

Sometimes, the words of Dr Nicoll seemed to explode in my heart and head as if I had been waiting all my life to hear these ideas. Don't listen to the words, he used to say, try to listen internally to the meaning. Some of the axioms of the Work were repeated over and over again and I wonder now whether we ever properly understood them with that deep understanding which was demanded of us. You are here, we were told, having already understood the necessity of contending only against yourself; thank anyone who gives you an opportunity of doing so. It is significant that we were never told 'You must not be negative' but 'You have a right not to be negative'.

Maurice Nicoll was a wise and good man who never lost his sense of wonder, whose light shone before men, who surely laid up for himself treasures in Heaven. He possessed in generous measure, the precious gift of being able to teach, to point the way.....