I cannot think of Dame Iris Murdoch dying. She slipped away gradually into Alzheimer's, thankfully without any pain, and then slipped away into silence. For almost 30 years the writer, Iris Murdoch, has been part of my imaginative and reading life; and Iris Murdoch the person has been a presence ever since I first met her in Oxford in 1986. We only met five times in all, three times in England, twice in Dublin but every meeting was enriching and memorable.
Each time I was struck by her apparent ordinariness. Her modesty was striking. She looked as if she dressed from Oxfam and she often carried a plastic bag. There was never a public personna, she was always private and that meant personal. Book signings and promotional tours were of no interest to her. When she finished one novel she began meticulously to plan the next. Her pleasure was creation.
She was also one of the most sympathetic persons I have ever known. Her selflessness was legendary. When I interviewed her for The Irish Times in 1986 she asked as many questions as I did. Her formidable intellect was never on display, her curiosity was totally genuine. She always cherished and claimed her Irishness. Not only were there Irish characters in many of her novels but The Unicorn and The Red and the Green are set in Ireland and The Book and the Brotherhood contains a scene set in Wicklow. Some people guffawed when they heard her English accent but part of Murdoch's inner world was absolutely Irish.
Though living all her life out of Ireland she visited regularly. In conversation she spoke of Moll's Gap, The Forty Foot, asked about the Irish educational system, the English curriculum in Ireland, Cahal Daly whom she admired and President Mary Robinson whom she sent congratulations to on her inauguration. Swimming was a particular passion. She was fascinated by people not at all interested in herself and though her mind was an extraordinary mind she never saw it as such.
When our daughter was born she asked for a photograph. There was postcards, Christmas cards, with her own little colourful designs and letters. We corresponded for 10 years. One letter asked me to recommend places to stay for some friends of her's who were visiting Dublin.
The last letter I received in California was dated April 8th, 1996. She wrote: "I hope you will at last come back to gloomy Ireland and those bombs etc". But by then Alzheimer's had already taken hold - the hand-writing was different, shaky and in biro. She always wrote in fountain pen and she wrote - "at present I find I cannot write any more literatures. It may come to me perhaps".
My most vivid memory of Iris is of a lunch she cooked in her totally comfortable and higgledy piggledy home on Charlbury Road in Oxford. John Bayley, her devoted husband whom she called Pussy had to go out and the two of us sat down to a meal which featured in her 1987 novel The Book and the Brotherhood. First I was offered two unmatching attractively decorated plates and she invited me to choose one. Then we ate delicious cold sausage and other meats, warm boiled potatoes, salad and for desert, little almond and chocolate slices. There was lots of very good red wine.
When Iris Murdoch contributed to Lifelines she chose Auden's A Summer Night. It was totally appropriate that she chose a poem which celebrated everything close to Murdoch's heart - friendship and morality.
Death has taken Irish Murdoch but she will live on in the rich and complex world of her fiction. One of her characters, James, in her Booker-prize winning novel, The Sea, The Sea says: "We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason." It is Iris Murdoch's ability to remind us and to reveal to us that infinitely strange and interesting inner life in her conversation and in her writing that I shall always cherish.