Closing out 2016, on the eve of an unpredictable 2017, I find...
Closing out 2016, on the eve of an unpredictable 2017, I find myself in a retrospective, what-if kind of mood.
Eighty years ago, Studies in Hand-Reading by Dr. Charlotte Wolff appeared in print (title page shown), with a preface by Aldous Huxley and several ink impressions of different individuals, including this one of Huxley’s hand.
Around two decades later, Huxley came across my father’s finely grained, more detailed photographic technique for rendering hands, and that discovery in many ways changed the future of my family (which I write about in my book Aldous Huxley’s Hands).
Dr. Wolff initially sparked Huxley’s interest in how the hand might provide a window for greater understanding of the human condition… and maybe even a deeper understanding, verging on the mystical. His novel Those Barren Leaves includes this passage near the end on page 360, where his character Calamy says:
“And I believe that if one could stand the strain of thinking really hard about one thing–this hand, for example–really hard for several days, or weeks, or months, one might be able to burrow one’s way right through the mystery and really get at something – some kind of truth, some explanation.”
It occurs to me that if Charlotte Wolff had not shown him the way, if Huxley had not become interested in hands, then he and my father would not have met. My dad would not have become friends with, and influenced by, this famous man. He would not have attended the Tuesday night salons at Huxley’s home on North Kings Road. I would not have written my book.
Yet if not for Dr. Wolff (like the proverbial butterfly wing stirring up the atmosphere), then our family’s fate and my own might have been different, for better or for worse.
Year’s end is the time for auld lang syne, that phrase from an ancient song dating back to an oral tradition in Scotland. It means ‘old long ago’ or days gone by. I raise my cup of gratitude, not without what-if curiosity, to Dr. Charlotte Wolf.
