Page 69 - Altrobiografie

Brief van Bill Slater
Dear Coen,
Lymington, July 3 1998
Thank you very much for your letter, your kind words and for the invitation to attend the festivities celebrating the 100 theses on cardiovascular research prepared under the direction of your colleague Reneman and yourself. As Marion has already explained, the delay in answering is due to my usual occupation during the early summer sailing somewhere along the English, French or (last year) Irish coasts. She also explained to you that the only important commitments that we have this summer, namely a meeting in Gloucester with an Australian cousin on July 10, a reunion in London on July 11, with husbands, of members of Marion’s college at Sydney University and my departure on July 12 to Boston for a Meeting of the Executive Editors of BBA (my last remaining function), unfortunately clashes with your celebrations. Please then accept by means of this letter our best wishes for the celebrations and our warm congratulations for the occasion. To reach one hundred theses on cardiovasecular research and to promote one hundred doctors specialised in cardiovascular research, starting from nothing1 are magnificent achievements.
You request a contribution to your "altrobiography", an original idea, but I think perfectly in character, since you have amply demonstrated in your career your originality (also "eigenwijsheid") that I recognised when you were in Amsterdam. You describe an altobiography as "a series of long letters to and from people that have played an important role in your life"- I am assuming then that your letter of June 1 is a Letter "to" and I shall refer to it in this letter -from-. I am glad that you request a "long letter”, since I am little short of time to write a short one.
I have recently published a more conventional autobiography2 in which more than half is devoted to my life pre-Amsterdam (1955) and most of the rest to the period 1955-1965. When you entered the laboratory in 1959r we were just emerging from the difficult first years, the laboratory was bursting at the seams with students at various stages of development and an influx of post-docs and those on 3-sabbatical leave, mostly from America, but there were as yet few staff members with sufficient experience to supervise beginners. I was very happy then, to leave you in the capable hands of Wim Hülsmann. Thus, I may have had less direct contact with you than with Piet Borst, Koen Minnaert or Monne van den Bergh, but it is so long ago that it is difficult to remember. Also, having successfully seduced Wim from medicine and being still engaged on the same project with Piet, I am sure that I would have hesitated in taking you away from paediatrics and my good friend Professor van Creveld. That, nevertheless, you took the same path as Wim and Piet, which I certainly do not regret, must have been due, as you say, to the insidious influence of the "oude stal" in Jonas Daniel Meijerplein 3.
It is true that in the 1950s, the Professor (and there was only one per department) had the power of an absolute monarch within his department. However, I can scarcely credit that I used such power to prevent you reading Swedish with your mother-in-law. some further explanation isrequiredhere,inthefirstplacetheprecisemeaningof"read” in your sentence. Do you mean "lezen" or are you using the word in the peculiarly Oxbridge sense, not recognised in Australian, to mean a field of study? Or did I disallow a stelling in the speciality of your mother-in-law? It is all so long ago, more than 36 years since defended your thesis. I wish I now had in front of me the laudatio after your promotion - I am sure that it is in my archives in the State Archives for North Tolland in Haarlem - but I hope that it was more laudatory than "better
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