And Justice For All. Stephen Ellmann
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While Arthur’s career was taking off and taking shape, his personal life was also being transformed. He had joined the Bar on his return from a trip to Europe with his friend Sydney Lipschitz, in the course of which Sydney had met the love of his life. Now Arthur returned home, to his mother’s house. At this point, in early 1956, Arthur was 24 years old. It may not have been unusual for the young men in his set to live in their parents’ houses well into young adulthood – Rusty Rostowsky, for example, lived in his family’s home until his marriage – but it is worth observing that Arthur did not have to remain at home. He had an inheritance of his own, and if that did not suffice he soon came to have an income from his quickly expanding law practice.
In any case, he did move out, but not at once. He made this move three years after his return to South Africa, in 1959, at the age of 27. It is hard not to think that his moving out either marked, or achieved, some personal transition. His friend Hillary Kuny (later Hillary Hamburger) recalled that Arthur’s mother almost had a nervous breakdown when he left.1 His mother was a strong and even domineering woman; Arthur’s move out of her house may have been many things, but it surely was in part a declaration of independence from his mother.
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What followed came quite quickly – so quickly that it is hard not to conclude that indeed Arthur had turned a corner in his personal life and was now ready to take on the personal responsibilities and pleasures of maturity in addition to the challenges of law practice that he was already mastering. Once Arthur moved out of his mother’s house, he rented a flat in Hillbrow, in the same building where his friends Denis and Hillary Kuny had once lived; they were no longer there, however, because they had decided to emigrate to England (a decision that proved short-lived, as they returned to South Africa within a year). Perhaps because Arthur was lonely on his own, he soon invited a young attorney named Julian Block to join him as a roommate. Arthur and Julian would become lifelong friends, and Julian would later remember that it was from Arthur that he first came to feel genuinely interested in the law (in which he would make his lifetime career).
Not long after Julian moved in with Arthur, Julian’s sister Toni, then a student at Wits, moved into another flat in the same building. In March 1960 Julian went on an extended trip abroad for business, and while he was abroad the Blocks’ father died. Toni was bereft, not only because of her father’s death and her brother’s absence but also because her own relations with her mother were very difficult. In Julian’s absence, Arthur stepped in to take care of Toni. That meant that he covered a considerable range of her expenses; when Julian returned and tried to repay him, Arthur absolutely refused to let him do so.
Arthur was already becoming known for his generosity. Around this same time his friend Sydney Lipschitz, engaged in his first political trial, got up at about 3 am to drive out to the rural courthouse where the case was being heard. On the way he fell asleep, and rolled his car. He survived unscathed, but the car was a total loss. When the time came for Sydney to drive back again for the rescheduled trial, Arthur lent him his own car for the purpose. Indeed, Arthur’s generosity continued throughout his life. In 1976, Arthur’s brother Sydney had to have open-heart surgery in the United States; Arthur lent Sydney R20,000, then a very substantial amount of money, to enable him to pay for the surgery.2 Years after that, Arthur and Lorraine would travel to Israel and arrive with an enormous wooden crate containing three high-quality blank canvasses, a gift for their artist friend Anne Sassoon – an ‘astonishing’ and ‘almost extravagant’ gift, in the words of Anne’s husband Benjamin Pogrund.3
But Arthur’s help to Toni Block was more than financial generosity; Arthur also provided her with support and companionship. After her father’s funeral, the mourners must have gathered at the Block parents’ home, and her mother asked Toni to stay the night, something Toni did not at all want to do. It was Arthur who, in Toni’s words, ‘stood up very tall over my mother and said, ‘“Hannah, Toni is coming home with me.”’ Arthur also guided her handling of the modest bequest she received from her father’s estate: ‘Arthur said to me, Toni, you have been left some shares what do you want to do with them. I said I had no idea, so he said, “If you had money, would you buy shares?” I said no, and so he saw to it that they were sold. I mean, I knew I could turn to Arthur in any situation and he would look after me and my interests and explain things to me in a simple, effective way.’4
Toni was already engaged to Gideon Shimoni, but Gideon, Toni recalls, was always involved in one meeting or another. He was both a very active Zionist – Gideon and Toni would soon make their Aliyah to Israel, where they still live – and a student beginning an academic career, which he would pursue with great success at Hebrew University. Arthur stepped in and took Toni out. They went boating with Arthur’s brother Sydney; they went to art exhibitions (and Toni still has two pictures Arthur bought for her, one by Arthur Goldreich, who would play an important part in the Rivonia case); they went shopping. Toni recalls that salesmen could see Arthur coming from far away, and that if he went into a store to buy socks, he would come out with a suit. In one shopping expedition, Toni apparently bought a mattress from the Chaskalson family mattress company, Transvaal Mattress; Arthur took her to the store and they got one that was cheap because it had been on store display.
This was an intimate, although platonic, relationship. Fifty-five years later, Toni Shimoni still speaks of her love for Arthur. With her own flat in the same building, she would regularly come by the flat that Arthur and her brother shared. At least once she arrived in Arthur’s apartment to find him in the bath, reciting poetry. Another time, she, her brother and Arthur (and perhaps others) went skinny-dipping in the pool of some family friends.
On another occasion, Toni came home from her day – she was in her final year as an undergraduate at Wits – and found a group of black penny-whistlers – street musicians using home-made instruments – on the pavement outside their building. Neighbours came outdoors to enjoy the show, but soon the police arrived and arrested all the performers. Toni rushed inside to Arthur’s flat and told him what had happened. They had been planning to go to Arthur’s mother’s home that evening for Shabbat dinner, but she recalls that ‘his reaction when I came up all hot and bothered was simply calmly to take charge and do exactly the right thing’. That was to say: ‘“We must go to Hillbrow police station – that is where they will be.” We went up and the only thing he could do to get these seven or so guys out of jail was to pay their fines – the black mark against them would of course remain. So he paid their fines – took some time – and by then it was too late to go to [his mother’s].’ Arthur’s ability to master a situation and take the steps needed to resolve it would also be seen repeatedly in the years to come.
Arthur would go on to be the best man at Gideon and Toni’s wedding in March 1961. But meanwhile, Toni, feeling very much in Arthur’s debt, set out to matchmake for him and for her brother (to whom she was also very close). She said of Arthur that ‘there was this beautiful, intelligent, interesting, wealthy man of great integrity, in other words totally the most eligible bachelor in town, who was with all that completely shy’. Many people felt, and feel, that Arthur was shy. Toni herself later revised her view, as she thought about her encountering him in the bath and going skinny-dipping with him; she decided he was not shy, or at any rate not physically shy, but ‘reserved, diffident, and unassuming’. In any case, Toni made it her business to ‘parad[e] every girl I knew from school, Habonim and university through the flat’ to meet Arthur and her brother. Arthur was, to use Toni’s word, ‘responsive’ to these visitors. Later on, Rosemary Block recalled, her husband Julian would joke that Arthur used to appropriate the women whom Julian had begun to date.5 But it seems that none of these relationships grew.
It isn’t entirely clear whether Arthur formed any serious relationship with a woman during this period though it does seem that he formed some connections. An old friend of Arthur’s, Gerald Rubenstein, said that Arthur ‘got about all right – he was very well liked by the pretty girls’.6 A cousin, Aubrey Lunz, remarked that Arthur was very discreet about his romantic life.7 But Arthur’s old