“There was something about him,” said Walcott, “something monstrously sad. I think he was probably the saddest man I have ever met, and even the word ‘sadness’ seems inadequate; there was something broken in him, something completely devastated. I always got the impression that life was a burden to him, that he no longer knew how to make contact with any living thing. I think he held out for exactly as long as was necessary to finish his work, and I don’t think any of us will ever know the effort he had to make in order to do so.”
