The Letters

The first time I met John Calmann was at Oxford, in the rooms of our mutual friend Robert Symmons. In a matter of seconds we were arguing about the relative merits of the Florentine and Venetian schools of painting. I was not only trounced in argument by his infinitely greater knowledge of painting; I was ground down. I returned to my college smarting in defeat, convinced that he was the rudest man I had ever come across, and that I would never meet him again.
Why was it that I found myself a week later hurrying off to John's rooms in the Canterbury Quad of Christ Church? Knowing none of the other people there, dazed by the speed of conversation, informed by my host when I did try to intervene that my remarks were banal, there, in his white panelled rooms looking out onto the crown of a copper beech, I entered a new world of friendship.