Clive Remembered

THE Yiddish word kochleffl might well have been coined to describe Professor of History and Literature John Clive, who died last month. I never knew him in the classroom and never would have known him at all had he been able to keep his nose out of other people's business. Yet because he could not, he became one of the dearest people I knew at Harvard.

I applied for a fellowship during my senior year, and Clive was one of my dozen interviewers. I received the fellowship, the interviewing committee dissolved, and Harvard more or less finished with me. Clive, however, had not.

He invited me to lunch in late May and there gave me a list of people to look up in England; he knew everyone there. During dessert, I remarked with a chuckle that the University was having trouble finding a place for me at Oxford and would probably stick me in a broom closet. My comment evoked what I took to be an insignificant "oh, really."

My interpretive skills were clearly deficient that day. Four days before graduation, Clive left a message for me with the Lowell House superintendent--Clive was wholly oblivious, I am convinced, to the student directory and the University operator. I returned his call, only to find that during the intervening two weeks he had made my casual luncheon remark his preoccupation. He had written letters and made transatlantic phone calls to friends and old colleagues. He was, I'm afraid, more concerned about my situation than I was.

After commencement, Clive went to England for a vacation--bringing my file with him. When he returned in July I thanked him, informing him that I had just been admitted to University College. However, he was not finished yet.

"I spoke with Isaiah and Lady Berlin," he said, "and they should be able to find a place for you at their college if you have trouble finding housing." I was now positively embarassed. Did he know any limits?

I still wonder why Clive made such a project out of a single student, one whom he hardly knew. He said that he felt a responsibilty, as a member of the interviewing committee, to see the matter to completion. Just as he knew no other way to contact a student but by leaving a message with the superintendent, so he could not comprehend the possibility of forsaking a personal matter once it had touched him. He felt an obligation to the individual; specialized administrative categorization was anathema to him.

Professor Clive was, then, hardly in sync with the dominant tune. One didn't have to attract his attention. It was indeed difficult to avoid it. When I entered Harvard, I read the Confi-Guide's annual admonition: "Mother Harvard doesn't cuddle her young." John Clive rendered this statement a falsehood, and made this university so much more of a human place.

Gary D Rowe '88 was Associate Editorial Chair of the Crimson.