by Jane Hawking
Encouraged by the success of these tentative trips abroad within Europe, Stephen’s aspirations knew no bounds. That December he soared away to the usual pre-Christmas scientific conference in Chicago to reclaim his place on the international circuit. These days he travelled with all the ceremonial due to an Arab sheikh, surrounded by hordes of minions, nurses, students, the personal assistant and the occasional colleague. He was attended by so much luggage that the chassis of the limousines that came to whisk him away to the airport often had difficulty in clearing the ground as they left the driveway. The airlines had learnt to treat Stephen with respect, as a valued customer rather than as an inconvenience, and accorded him the sort of deference and assistance which, had it come twenty years earlier when I was struggling to look after Stephen and a tiny baby, might have spared me much stress. Nowadays, ironically, my presence was almost superfluous on the international travels. Alone among so many people, I often took Tim along for companionship, just as Robert had been my small companion in days gone by. Tim fulfilled this role admirably. He loved air travel and, as the plane was gathering speed for take-off – my worst moment – he would gasp, “Faster! faster!” dispelling my lingering fears with his contagious excitement. There was much that I could teach him and interest him in on these travels, not least a grounding in the Romance languages. In Spain, with patience and a total lack of competitiveness, he taught me to play chess, something his father had never succeeded in doing.
6
Maths and Music
Although eighteen months previously Stephen’s chances of survival had been dismissed as negligible, he had confounded the pessimists yet again: he had survived and was back in the forefront of scientific research, theorizing on abstruse suppositions about imaginary particles travelling in imaginary time in a looking-glass universe which did not exist except in the minds of the theorists. His phenomenal resurrection and the consequent transformation of his prospects had galvanized him into even more intense industry. He was travelling again, terrestrially and universally, whenever and wherever he chose. Above all, just over a year since his first painstaking attempts to come to grips with the workings of the computer and his cautious return to the Department, he had completed the second draft of his book and was searching for a title. His state of health continued to be extremely precarious, the subject of perpetual anxiety, but with all the aids of modern medicine and twenty-four hour nursing care at his disposal, he virtually carried his own mini-hospital with him wherever he went. The nurses had learnt emergency techniques for changing the tracheotomy tube, and Stephen himself had taken charge of his medication as he reckoned, rightly, that he knew more about his case than any doctor.
Another nurse – tall, aristocratic Amarjit Chohan from the Punjab – had joined the rota. By night she worked in the operating theatres at Addenbrooke’s, and by day (and in her free time) she came to look after Stephen. In lonely exile from her own home, the victim of thinly veiled racism, she adopted us with a passionate intensity which soon began to upset the other nurses. Stephen was flattered to find himself the contested prize in the battles which the more volatile, less stable of his attendants fought for his favours, and regarded their squabbles with bemused complicity. In Spain, Tim and I were astounded to watch while one of the nurses flirted unashamedly with a student and then actually resorted to fisticuffs with another nurse over some petty argument. Like distant thunder, rivalry between assertive personalities, each insisting on the superiority of her own method of care, rumbled menacingly. It was yet an additional wearisome problem at home and a source of embarrassment in public abroad.
The big event of 1987 which, among the imaginary trajectories and illusory universes, was exercising Stephen and all those caught up in his orbit was the celebration of the tercentenary of the publication of Newton’s Principia Mathematica with an international conference to be held in Cambridge. Stephen was firmly established at the centre of this event, since the Newtonian tradition of leading cosmological research in Cambridge was consigned to his care as Lucasian Professor, and his work was the logical extension of Newtonian physics modified by the twentieth-century influence of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the year of Galileo’s death and three hundred years before Stephen’s birth. Although his education as a schoolboy in Grantham and as a “sizar” or servant-student in Trinity College was conservative, his major work Principia Mathematica was directly influenced by the mechanical and mathematical principles formulated by René Descartes, the great seventeenth-century French philosopher. In Cambridge in the 1660s Descartes’ theories provoked “such a stir, some railing at him and forbidding the reading of him as if he had impugned the very Gospel. And yet there was a general inclination, especially of the brisk part of the University to use him”. Newton took Descartes’ principles home with him to Woolsthorpe Manor just after his graduation at the outbreak of the Plague. It was during that extraordinary period of creativity at Woolsthorpe Manor that Newton at the age of twenty-three developed his three major discoveries: the calculus, the universal theory of gravitation and the theory of the nature of light.
Newton may have been “brisk” in adopting Descartes’ theories, but he was not at all brisk about publishing the results to which those theories had led him. Principia Mathematica was finally published in 1687 at the insistence of Samuel Pepys, the President of the Royal Society, and Edmond Halley, the young astronomer. In his magnum opus, Newton not only proposed the Law of Universal Gravitation, predicting the elliptical movement of the planets around the sun, but also developed the complicated mathematics of such motions. It is in Principia Mathematica that mathematics is harnessed to the service of physics and is rigorously applied to the visible universe. Opticks, Newton’s other great work, also developed in the Plague years but not published until 1704, described light as a spectrum of colours which in combination formed white light, but which could be split into seven component bands. Newton set up a prism in the path of a sunbeam and watched as the white light entering the prism split into the colours of the rainbow, producing not the rounded image of the sun on the opposite wall, but an oblong image, where the seven colours from blue to red separated and fanned out “according to their degrees of refrangibility”. If Principia Mathematica was inspired by the fall of an apple in the garden of Woolsthorpe Manor, the inspiration for Opticks was commercial – the improvement of the glass in the telescope, the instrument which Galileo had first turned on the heavens in the winter of 1609. Although Newton would have described himself as a natural philosopher, one might designate him the first great modern mathematician and physicist.
The product of an unhappy childhood, Newton could be dictatorial and not a little devious. He earned a reputation for vindictiveness in his treatment of the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who claimed to have discovered the calculus first. Newton’s discovery of the calculus, or fluxions as he called them, was prompted by his need in the mid-1660s for a general method of mathematical calculation, essential for dealing with the dynamics of planetary motion. It was put to immediate use in his theory of gravitation, but typically he failed to publish his results and was then incensed when Leibniz published his independent findings in 1676. There was nevertheless a humbler aspect of this embittered genius which appealed to me. When writing of his role in science, he speculated about his own importance, unsure of the significance of his discoveries: “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”. “Collecting pebbles on the beach” was the very image Stephen had used in 1965 to pour scorn on medieval studies.
Newton left no stone unturned on his particular beach. Although in the opinion of contemporaries he was said to be tone-deaf, he had in 1667 produced a theory of music. Of Musick was a fairly unremarkable t
reatise containing nothing new; in it he considered questions of tuning the scale and compared in logarithmic terms the just and equal temperaments. He also used music to draw synaesthetic analogies between the seven notes of the diatonic scale and the seven bands of colour in the spectrum, basing those analogies on the breadth of the colour bands and the seven string lengths required to produce a scale.
The link between Newton’s personal tastes and music was rather tenuous but, taken with all the other considerations, his theoretical interest was strong enough to justify putting on a concert of the music of his era to celebrate his tercentenary. Another of the considerations centred on the fact that Newton’s genius was initially fired by the new approach to science coming from France, while with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 a wave of enthusiasm for the innovative French style in music came to England with Charles II – inspiring the other great English genius of the period, Henry Purcell. Since, together with the music of Bach and Handel, the music of Henry Purcell formed the basis of the Cambridge Baroque Camerata’s repertoire, there could have been no more appropriate way of entertaining the delegates to the Newton tercentenary conference than with a concert of the music of that period. However much Stephen might have preferred it, a performance of the Ring Cycle was hardly feasible. The great advantage of such a prestigious occasion, to be held in Trinity College, was that it attracted commercial sponsorship for the orchestra at last, not only enabling Jonathan to put his musical enterprise on a secure footing, but also to make a recording of the programme, entitled Principia Musica.
Again, Stephen, Jonathan and I seemed to have struggled back to some sort of synthesis of our various talents and interests. Although the modern physics of quantum theory was completely beyond me, I could research Newtonian physics with some understanding of the concepts if not of the mathematics, and I could make myself useful liaising between the mathematical and the musical aspects of that summer’s major endeavour. I enjoyed concert organization: it was hard work but, like teaching, it gave me a sense of self-worth. As well as the practical business of concert promotion, arranging the venue, the advertising, the ticketing and so on, there was the intellectual stimulus of researching the background to the music for the programme notes. In pursuit of information about the late seventeenth-century musical scene, I found myself drawn back into the precincts of the University Library, where the frenetic tempo of daily existence slowed to a reverent, unhurried pace. My researches yielded a welcome connection between Newton and Purcell in the writings of an eminent seventeenth-century musicologist and undergraduate contemporary of Newton’s, Roger North, who concluded that the great “practical diversions” of his life had been “reducible to two heads: one, Mathematicks, and the other Musick”. His delight in mathematics culminated in “Mr Newton’s new and most exquisitely thought” hypothesis of light “as a blended mixture of all colours”. As for music, there can be little doubt that “the devine Purcell” afforded him the greatest pleasure as he came “full saile into the superiority of the musicall faculty”.
As in days past, the hours I could spend in the University Library were lamentably scarce. There was time only for dashing in to check a few references before rushing out with a pile of books under my arm. Before the Newton celebrations in July, there was a flurry of other activities to be fitted into the calendar. I was never at rest, propelled by an inner tension which pervaded every aspect of my being – physical, mental, intellectual, creative and spiritual. Yet again, I had to prove to myself that I was a worthy companion to Stephen’s genius, and to the world at large I had to prove that we were still operating as a normal family. Apart from our academic activities, there were more parties and dinners, more work for charities, more concerts and conferences, more travel and more honorary degrees. Though other families led busy lives, by comparison with theirs ours was not normal: it was insane. I depended for my survival on all the support and reinforcement that my myriad activities and my family, friends and Jonathan could give me. Stephen’s nursing companions, gifted in neither insight nor imagination, viewed these pit-props to be counter to Stephen’s interests rather than supportive of them. Soon I, and the rest of the family, were made to feel that we should be apologizing for our presence, for our very existence, for breathing the same air as the man of genius. More often than not, it was Lucy who helped me keep a sense of perspective and Jonathan who encouraged me to retain some self-respect. Jonathan’s frequent and comforting presence however had increasingly become the cause of much tight-lipped whispering and drawing-in of breath by those outsiders who, in their shallowness, sought to govern others by standards which, as events were to prove, they themselves were unable to sustain.
As Lucy was continuing with her Russian studies and was in her first year of A levels, she came to Moscow again in May 1987 with Stephen and me for yet another conference at the Academy of Sciences. The Academy, like so many other Russian institutions, was quietly dropping its former “Soviet” nomenclature in recognition of the dramatic change which was taking place in Russian society. “Perestroika” and “glasnost” were the words dancing on everybody’s lips with an infectious excitement, bordering upon euphoria. “What do you think of the changing state of affairs in this country?” journalists asked Lucy and me after Stephen’s public lecture. “The very fact that you can ask such a question is proof enough of the extraordinary change,” we replied. Freedom of speech, freedom from oppression, freedom to travel – these were astoundingly precious liberties to people who had been restricted to the chilling, grey confines of a shadowy one-party state.
We too were much freer than on previous visits to Moscow. We could go where we liked without being accompanied or trailed, and the entertainment provided for us was not just the obligatory visit to the Bolshoi but a concert in a church outside Moscow as well. Religious fervour had gripped Moscow. In the church of the Novodevichy Monastery, for example, the air was thick with the smoke of hundreds of lit candles, around which the faithful were chanting and genuflecting as if to make up for lost time. By coincidence, I had spent the winter months rehearsing Rachmaninov’s Vespers with the choir – in Russian – for performance in Jesus College Chapel in March. To my delighted surprise, the concert to which we were taken was performed by a similar group of amateur singers and consisted of unaccompanied Russian liturgical settings, sounding very much like the Vespers in an atmosphere that was tense with the novelty and promise of reawakening tradition. Against a richly gilded backdrop of icons, the majestic basso profondo voices summoned up dark Russian vowels, rolled them on the tongue and emitted them into the resonant spaces of the ancient church, where their deep-toned sonorities held the audience enraptured.
Through being in Moscow, I missed an occasion in Cambridge which was of profound significance not only to the children, Jonathan and me, but to the whole of the parish of St Mark’s. Our vicar, Bill Loveless, was retiring. So devastated was the congregation at losing its dearly loved incumbent that the parish went into a state resembling collective mourning for a long period after his departure. In the spring Lucy had taken the opportunity to attend Bill’s final series of classes, leading to her confirmation. At about that time, in honour of his forthcoming retirement, the choir put on a concert at which I sang a couple of his favourite Schubert lieder, including Die Forelle, and afterwards we held a large farewell supper party at West Road. Even so, I was sad not to be present at his last Sunday service. He had a fund of wisdom of which I had only scratched the surface; indeed, one of his last sermons, on the theme of the search for a quiet mind, had impressed me deeply. In it he uncovered every aspect of my own lack of peace: my concerns, my fears – for Stephen, for my children and for myself – my inability to rest, the tensions and the cares, the frustrations and the uncertainties. He also broached that other group of emotional disturbances associated with an unquiet mind, those evoked by guilt, to which I was no stranger. Self-reproach trailed me like a menacing shadow. I listened for whatever scraps of comfort
he could throw in my direction. Live in the present, he said, and trust in God through darkness, pain and fear. Then, as he quoted the biblical passage from Corinthians, “God will not suffer you to be tested more than you are able”, I felt that his words were aimed at me alone. Guilt, he went on to say, is the risk that comes from striving always for the highest and the best; love is the only answer to guilt. Only in love can we sustain each other. His words offered a new resolution to the gnawing dilemma of guilt. Love was most certainly the force that sustained our household. According to that reckoning, I was being true to my promise: I had love for everyone, abundant maternal love for each of the children, love for Stephen as well as love for Jonathan. Love had many facets, Agape as well as Eros, and I wanted to continue to prove my love for Stephen by doing my best for him, but sometimes that love became so entangled with the legion of worries generated by the responsibility for his care that it was hard to know where anxiety ended and love began. Stephen himself was insulted by any mention of compassion: he equated it with pity and religious sentimentality. He refused to understand it and rejected it outright.
