Memories of Andrew Nicholson

The death of Andrew Nicholson has left a hole in the world of Byron Studies that will be hard to fill. As John Clubbe, Joint President of the International Byron Society, has put it: 'Andrew may never be replaced.' In this relatively brief tribute I try to do some justice to Andrew's variety and complexity, but I am painfully conscious that such a gesture may be futile and that I may even have disappointed many of those who were generous enough to contribute their memories. Paul Douglass, who (among other things) shared some of Andrew's musical interests, notes that 'Andrew constantly surprised me with the extent of his large circle of acquaintances'. In truth, Andrew's thanksgiving service suggested that his life had involved not only an unusually large number of friends and acquaintances but more than one circle. This tribute will concentrate its focus on the world of Byron Studies, in the hope that later rememberings will extend the range.

Nobody can doubt that Andrew was an exceptional figure. Nora Crook remembers him especially for his 'devotion to maintaining the highest standards of scholarship, his kindness and his sense of fun'. Virginia Murray records that he was 'a born editor and meticulous about everything he did'. Bernard Beatty, for many years editor of The Byron Journal, first met Andrew in about 1985/6 in London, and recalls that he was 'direct, engaging, youthful, unafraid, obviously scornful of cant but generous and open'. At an early stage, Bernard sensed 'that curious radical shyness or insecurity in him which seemed to run alongside exuberant self-confidence'. This unusual man, 'once seen not forgotten', Bernard attempts to characterise with a range of adjectives and descriptions that capture something of his diversity, even his apparently contradictory qualities - that nature 'antithetically mixt' that Byron had detected in Napoleon: he 'was poor, honourable, had absolute integrity, eccentric in the extreme, private, open, generous - in touch with both the extreme melancholy in Mahler and Byron but also with their joy and their ability to jump from one to another or to hold both together in impossible union for a while'.

John Clubbe, who met Andrew over a number of years, rightly celebrates his scholarship, which was 'extraordinarily perceptive as well as extraordinarily thorough', and also comments: 'Listening to Andrew's papers, I always enjoyed the boyish enthusiasm with which he delivered them and his ready and witty conversation in the interstices of conferences.' Jerome McGann, one of the three dedicatees of Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose (1991), looks back to a first encounter in 1975 in the North Room of the British Library. He and Andrew spent many long lunch hours discussing the problems of editing, a practice that continued later, 'when I would come to England, usually for a year, to work on the edition'. McGann remembers:

The topics grew more eclectic (in the best sense), from arguments about German and Italian opera to Byron fakes and forgeries. The esprit of the man gave it all a special life, enduring to this day in my memories. Who will ever forget, or wish to be free of, that exuberant, infectious laugh!

My own judgment, as his former Head of Department, is that he was a great scholar who was also an admirable human being. Marjorie Dunderdale, who at that time was our Executive Assistant and later became Head of Administration and Resources in the School of Arts, recognised that Andrew was out of the ordinary: 'He always had a special place in my heart as one of the most endearing, eccentric academic members of staff in English.' As the most recent editor of The Byron Journal, Alan Rawes also regularly encountered Andrew and found him unfailingly courteous and modest: 'He was never angry, but he was deeply embarrassed by any mistake he might have made (a very rare occurrence), enthusiastically and helpfully collaborated on all and any changes and was graciousness itself once the process was over.' Alan revealingly admits: 'I found it a great pleasure to work with him and to be in his cultured, exuberant presence. He was a tonic and...