Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

166 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

in his favourite bookshops, wandering round art galleries. As often as not one or two people would come round to see him of an afternoon, when the discussion and talk could easily go on into the small hours of the morning without a break. As the evening progressed they would be joined by others who had been at work during the day. Eventually people would begin to drift back to their respective homes. Then came the time for relaxation. He would retire to his own rooms with a small group of his most intimate friends and associates. This was the time for being what he called “small friends”—for sitting back and relaxing, listening to music or just chatting. If things had gone badly during the day for some reason—if he felt that someone had let him or themselves down, if some scheme had failed to come to fruition—then it was also the time when those closest to him caught a glimpse of the self-doubt that he would suffer, the occasional periods of resignation.

But if he experienced doubt and dismay himself, he was no less moved by the sufferings of others. If someone arrived during an evening who was in some kind of distress he would send everyone away, cancel everything that was planned for the evening, in order to cope with the personal problem. When S. G. Hobson died in poverty, it was Mitrinovi¢ who raised the bulk of the money to pay for the funeral. In his autobiography Charles Purdom recalled the support and comfort he derived from Mitrinovic on the death of his son Philip. David Davies observed that Mitrinovic “would take infinite pains with individuals and allowed nothing to put him off,” remembering the time when Watson Thomson had returned home to Edinburgh suffering from a bout of malaria and Mitrinovi¢ insisted on travelling north to visit his sick friend.282 Even Davies, who had his disagreements with him, admitted that “there was not a trace of malice in him or any bitterness. Never have I met anybody more free of either.”~° For Davies, also, “Mitrinovi¢ was a man of amazing generosity. He had no sense of meum and teum. For property and money (its symbol) he had utter contempt.”3° There were quite a number of old friends and colleagues from the New Britain days and before who relied on him for ‘loans’ and subsidies during times of financial embarrassment.

How does one reconcile such personal generosity and kindness with the merciless assaults that he would regularly launch against one or other of those around him? So much about Mitrinovié seems paradoxical. For example, he was always telling people what to do, often with a ferocity and insistence which was hard to resist—they should leave him, they should read this book, they should pursue this course of study and so on. But within the course of a short time he would often proffer several mutually incompatible