My Father and Myself by J.R. Ackerley Page A

where eyes should be placed and what they ought to do. He was liable, in the early ’twenties, to come out with a number of maxims, old adages common to his generation, perfectly absurd for the most part and out of which we managed to joke him, a process to which he was easily amenable. Among them were two “chaps” who came in for very severe strictures: there was the “chap who doesn’t look you straight in the eyes” and there was the “chap whose eyes are too close together”: neither could be trusted. These quaint fancies, which I reported among my friends, had upon us all a somewhat self-conscious effect: should we pass muster? I have said elsewhere that I did not find it altogether comfortable to look my father in the eye; this was partly due to his maxim, partly to the fact that I myself don’t much like looking people straight in the eyes, and partly to his cast or squint which made it difficult, in his case, to do so. The consequent tests were sometimes unnerving. His own gaze, which perhaps he supposed straight, was ever full, thoughtful and prolonged, and it was his habit, according to the distance from him one happened to be sitting, sometimes to lower his head and regard one over the rims of his spectacles, a cross-examining look, sometimes to tilt back his head for a better focus. Thus with his magnified blue eyes swimming behind the lenses, he fixed one, yet not, as it were, quite in one’s place, his cast causing the beams of his lamps to intersect too soon and pull one in, so that one sometimes felt not merely scrutinized but trapped at an uncomfortable distance, at too close quarters. My own eyes, I remember, when I was younger, often felt as though they were starting from their sockets under the strain of bravely meeting his; if my self-conscious gaze so much as wavered, I thought, the game would be up, my guilt established.
    His general physical effect, then, may be described by such words as “impressive,” “authoritative,” “commanding,” but in fact, at any rate in domestic life, he exerted little authority and did not command. To what extent he directed his business I do not know; he certainly did not direct his home. Even in family quarrels, the only ones we ever had, the jealous disputes that broke out between my sister and mother, he seldom intervened, he did not take sides and put people in their places, though there were many times when he should have done so. Whatever he thought, and it was easily guessed, for the faults were easily seen, he kept to himself until, later, he might give it private expression to me in some rueful comment. I think myself that this massive and commanding appearance really sheltered a timid, unassertive, tolerant spirit, rather child-like and secretive, often obstinate, but diffident rather than self-confident, one who preferred to stand outside of life and observe it, not (as he would have phrased it) to “put one’s oar in.”
    A short dialogue from one of my notebooks sets the prevailing domestic tone. My father and I are drinking an aperitif with some guests before dinner, awaiting the appearance, always late, of my mother and sister who are dressing upstairs. The butler brings in the first course, and my father says:
    â€œWhat is it, Avery?”
    â€œFish, sir.”
    â€œHot or cold?”
    â€œHot, sir.”
    â€œAh well, it will be cold by the time the ladies arrive.”
    It might be thought to follow from all this—and, when one remembers the end of the de Gallatin affair, it seems to me revealing—that he deeply disliked and carefully avoided being emotionally upset. It was perhaps to protect himself that he interfered so little in my sister’s stormy affairs; he did not know how to cope with tempers and tears. He would not read the books or see the plays I sometimes recommended if he knew them to be at all tragic and harrowing. Once I trapped him into