Record of a Friendship

the leader. In my own little work I see the Pauls. They open schools and
advertise "ordered freedom"; they have co-education with boys in one
barracks and girls over the way and a housemother with a flaming sword
on guard. They take your idea and suitably castrate it... and inci­
dentally get big fees and prosper, while S'hill struggles to make ends
meet. I can't do a thing about it, and if a little Jesus cannot, what can
a big one do?
Recognition. How you hate that word. "Let them come to me: I
won't go to them." You and I have fought about this since 1938. You
always seem to take it that I want you to be recognised by the Einsteins,
Bernals, Haldanes, wanting them to assure me that you really are right.
But I think of recognition in another way; I think of reaching as many
as possible. I'd publish your Christ at 20 cents and broadcast its
message to the world. I say that the only way to preserve your
message in its original form is to broadcast it to the four winds. S'hill has
had influence over half the globe simply because I wrote about it.
Jesus and women. The criticism will be: What is your evidence? I am
here taking the post of Devil's Advocate deliberately. The critic will say:
Sure, he had women who adored him, but so did Rudolph Valentino, so
does James Mason; any man who can hold an audience will have women
who adore him. The religionists will of course argue that Martha's
annoyance with him and Mary was due to the fact that they were talking
while she had to wash up. Personally I think the best proof of his
lovelife lies in the open anti-sex of all the other "saviours." Paul, Calvin,
John Knox, the Popes, the bishops. None have associated with publicans
and sinners. But proof there can never be.
Why did you leave out his disciples, his best-loved John, his stupid
Peter? Because of your disgust at your own disciples? And I think you
might have made more of the anti-life, hateful Paul, the man who
seemed to go about trying to keep down the wrong kind of erection.
Had his tirade against women anything to do with his views on Jesus
and his women?
I can see that this great book of yours will make the enemy nod his
little swelled head and say: "Now we have proof at last. We knew he
was mad, but this is the final proof ... he thinks he is Christ; he is a
genital character and so he makes his Jesus one too." And of course
you are a Jesus. A Jesus is a man who feels completely distressed at the
misery of mankind. We others are common clay; we do our crosswords,
play our bridge, our golf; we talk about nothings. I don't run my school