And Justice For All. Stephen Ellmann
recalled a holiday trip he and Arthur made to Cape Town; a young woman Arthur met there was very keen on him, and came to Johannesburg and wanted to go out with him – but Arthur said he didn’t want to, and asked if Joel would go out with her instead.8
In any event, nothing came of Toni’s matchmaking. What did happen was that Toni graduated from Wits, and did very well. She earned four ‘firsts’ – the highest grades possible – and Arthur was very proud of her. ‘Four firsts,’ he said repeatedly, and in her honour he organised a party in December 1960. Arthur’s roommate Julian invited his girlfriend, Gill Kuper, and then (to Arthur’s irritation, since he was picking up the bill) her younger brother, Richard. Richard Kuper brought his date, a woman with whom he was seriously involved, Lorraine Dianne Ginsberg.
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Arthur told the story of that evening many years later, at a party celebrating Lorraine’s 70th birthday. He described Lorraine as
a beautiful young woman with red hair, who captivated me over dinner and later at the flat which Julian and I shared, to which we went after seeing a musical called Lock Up Your Daughters. The most notable thing about the musical was the scenery which was unstable with the result that building facades, which provided the background for the players, wobbled about and looked as if they were about to fall. That is all I can remember about Lock Up Your Daughters.
Lorraine recalled that musical too. She said it was notable for the problems with the sets, and for the inexperience of the actors. She found it almost impossible not to laugh. But meanwhile she looked at Arthur, sprawled in the front row ahead of her (because he was so tall), and felt that he was simply the most beautiful man she had ever seen.9
After the play the party moved back to Arthur’s flat for drinks and talk. Arthur continued, in his speech for Lorraine’s birthday:
I lent Lorraine three books that night, hoping that she would have to return them, or failing that, that I would have to enquire about them. She did return them not long afterwards, but with a note and not in person. It did, however, provide an opportunity for me to ask her out, which with some trepidation I did, and to my delight she accepted.10
Arthur’s opening gambit was a good one. The books – apparently Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, The Castle by Franz Kafka, and The Plague by Albert Camus – marked the beginning of an intellectual and, quite likely, emotional connection between Arthur and Lorraine. They were also important books for Arthur, as we will see. Lorraine would go on to read very widely, but in December 1960 she was just two months past her 18th birthday and in her first year at Wits. These were books that were important to Arthur. They also seemed to mark him as a wide-ranging reader, but Lorraine would later joke that while she had thought these three books were the tip of the iceberg, it turned out that for Arthur, not a big reader at this stage, they were the complete iceberg.11 Nevertheless they broke the ice.
Lorraine returned the books in February 1961. They came back with a note, as Arthur said, referring to only two books; apparently Lorraine had already read the third and so did not take it with her that evening. Her note to Arthur, accompanying the books, showed intellectual excitement and personal gratitude but offered no romantic invitation, unsurprisingly since it was apparently to be delivered by Lorraine’s boyfriend Richard. Still it provided Arthur with the opening he needed – and he kept it for the rest of his life. It read:
10th February, 1961
Dear Arthur:
Thanks very much for the two books which Richard has promised to return tonight. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t read much of the Thomas Mann, but I’m determined to try The Magic Mountain. I think that The Castle is one of the finest books I’ve ever read and am very grateful to you for introducing me to Kafka.
Yours sincerely,
Lorraine
Meanwhile, Lorraine’s relationship with Richard Kuper deteriorated, by mail – he went overseas to study, presumably after delivering Lorraine’s note to Arthur.
Arthur went on in his speech, describing the beginnings of their courtship:
One of our first outings was to an Athol Fugard play, I think it was the Bloodknot, which I rather enjoyed. I said so, and that led to our first, but not last, disagreement. Lorraine thought that it was sentimental, said so, and made clear why she did not like it. She was much more assured in this debate than me, and I was unable to deal adequately with her arguments. However, we parted on good terms, and despite my ineptness, she was willing to continue going out with me. Soon after that we went to watch the film Hiroshima Mon Amour. Lorraine thought it was a wonderful film; unfortunately, the film had a hypnotic quality to it which caused me to fall asleep, and I had to apologise. Lorraine wanted me to see the film, and that led to our going to see it again. Lorraine enjoyed it even more the second time, but the hypnotic quality proved too much for me, and I fell asleep again.
It turned out that we were very different persons, but our differences proved to be complementary and not divisive, and strengthened our relationship. Believing that we were made for each other we got married. After more than fifty years, and the tensions and stresses inherent in marriage, I still believe that, and marvel at my good fortune.
Lorraine was young – she was more than ten years younger than Arthur, and an undergraduate at Wits – and passionate. Joel Joffe felt that Lorraine brought Arthur to a deeper expression of his emotional capacity, and that this made him better at leading others, listening to them and bringing them together. She could be sharp: Toni Shimoni remembers driving with Arthur and Lorraine in Johannesburg at Christmas, and seeing a large ‘Merry Xmas’ sign – and Lorraine’s saying, ‘If it were up to me it would say “Fuck you”!’ Her feelings were intense, and the fire of those feelings was so hot that Rosemary Block, who married Arthur’s roommate Julian and knew Arthur and Lorraine as a couple very early on, called her ‘erotic’. Arthur’s brother Sydney remembered her running across the lawn, her red hair streaming behind her. Rosemary also recalled that initially, because Lorraine was so much younger than Arthur, the lovers kept their attachment quite secret – so much so that it was a surprise even for Rosemary’s husband Julian, formerly Arthur’s roommate, to learn of the relationship. Toni Shimoni, however, remembered knowing that Arthur was going out with Lorraine more quickly, in fact not long after the party where they met.
Arthur, fifty years later, describes Lorraine’s intensity in more mellow terms. He recalled: ‘Before we were married, Lorraine’s father, a very sweet man who loved her dearly, once took me into his confidence and described her to me as being very stubborn.’12 Arthur’s memory of Lorraine’s father doesn’t spell out what seems to have been the case: that she was a force to be reckoned with in her childhood home. Rosemary Block said that Lorraine had ruled the roost there, but her rule doesn’t seem to have been a happy one for her. Lorraine told me that she felt that her mother wanted her to be a different person from the one she actually was, and this left Lorraine with a deep and lasting anger.13 As a child, she escaped from her mother into books – she and her father would go to the public library to take them out – and no doubt this helped set her on the intellectual path she would follow. Her parents were not wealthy (her father was a travelling salesman), but they must have been committed to her following her star, since they evidently supported her going to university, and in her generation she may have been the only member of the family who did so. (A better-off uncle, however, may have paid her fees.14) Rosemary recalls that Arthur, for his part, was extremely nice to both of Lorraine’s parents, and they were bowled over by him.
Arthur clearly was captivated by Lorraine’s spirit. He went on to reflect on what her father had called stubbornness:
Well, I agree that she does have firm views which when they take root are difficult to counter. This was evident at a very young age when, on a matter of principle, she ran away from nursery school. The school provided the children with milk, but Lorraine did not care for milk and made arrangements with the boy who sat next to her and who liked milk, to take hers as well as his. When that was discovered they were separated and she was required