December 30, 1998 John Bayley and Iris Murdoch: Devotion Refuses to Yield By SARAH LYALL OXFORD, England -- Iris Murdoch, the celebrated author of 26 rigorously intellectual novels, stood uncertainly in the doorway of her living room, her face frozen in the blank expression that is a sure badge of Alzheimer's disease. It was only when she saw her husband, the critic, professor and novelist John Bayley, that a flicker of comprehension sparked in her eyes. But it was gone, as quickly as it came. Jonathan Player for The New York Times In "Elegy for Iris," John Bayley writes about life with his wife, Iris Murdoch, who has Alzheimer's disease. ______________________________________________________________ "Hello, darling," Bayley said tenderly, as if speaking to a beloved child. "Wouldn't you like to come and sit down?" It felt at first like a terrible intrusion, being in the house with the couple. It was unbearably sad to see the once-brilliant Murdoch, 79, shuffle slowly into the room, sit stiffly and then do nothing but stare intently ahead. And it was unbearably sad when Bayley began explaining in his un-self-pitying, slightly quizzical way what life is like now that Alzheimer's has his wife firmly in its grasp. But Bayley and Murdoch, whose relationship began more than 40 years ago when he saw her bicycling past his window in Oxford and fell instantly in love, have never had an ordinary relationship. And by the end of a morning with them, it was impossible not to believe that -- however odd it may seem -- they have made their peace, and are alone together in a world that somehow suits them. Bayley, who at 73 seems like a wholly sweet and slightly eccentric uncle, dressed in indifferently fitting, indifferently laundered clothes with a few strands of fluffy white hair flowing from the back of his otherwise bald head, makes a passionate case for this view in his new memoir, "Elegy for Iris." The book, which is being published in the United States by St. Martin's Press, has drawn glowing reviews, as both a lyric description of the arc of a singular marriage and as an unflinching account of the frustrations of Alzheimer's. There were slight rumblings in the British news media about Bayley's motives for writing the book. Wasn't it cruel to expose Murdoch this way, they asked? But Bayley is not embarrassed by his wife's state, and neither should anyone else be, he said. "When something like this happens, you lose all sense of shame and privacy," he said. In the beginning, Bayley said, stuttering as he does when he speaks quickly, he fought and raged against his wife's descent into unknowingness. But he is past that now, and his anger has given way to acceptance. "Life is no longer bringing the pair of us 'closer and closer apart,' in the poet's tenderly ambiguous words," he writes, in a typically graceful passage. "There is a certain comic irony -- happily, not darkly comic -- that after more than 40 years of taking marriage for granted, marriage has decided it is tired of this and is taking a hand in the game. Purposefully, persistently, involuntarily, our marriage is now getting somewhere. It is giving us no choice -- and I am glad of that." The book is divided into two parts. The first, "Then," tells how Bayley, a young and spectacularly unworldly scholar, was smitten from the moment he glimpsed her. But Murdoch, a brilliant rising star who was then teaching philosophy at St. Anne's College, Oxford, proved elusive. When they embraced for the first time, speaking in a childish shorthand, "with arms around each other, kissing and rubbing noses," he writes, he began to understand that she needed him as much as he needed her. Deciding not to have children, they both went on to have glittering careers, although Murdoch's was the more public success. As she was producing novel after novel and being made a Dame of the British Empire, Bayley was making his own mark, as a teacher (he retired several years ago as the Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford), reviewer and literary critic whose many books include studies of Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and Henry James, as well as four novels. "Elegy for Iris" is studded with literary references -- it is clear that he has found solace in literature -- but in conversation Bayley is so self-effacing that it is easy to forget his formidable intellect. To him and his wife, marriage has always meant a refuge from alone-ness, a secure haven that allows them their independence together. In an odd way, Bayley said, this has helped him deal with the constraints of the present. He looks forward to the end of the day, when his wife is safely asleep and he can pour himself a drink and revisit the comforts of one of his favorite books, typically a well-worn novel by Barbara Pym or Austen. "A solitary life is splendid, provided you can lead it with someone else," he said. "That's paradoxical, but it's extremely true in our case. We've always had that sort of life; she had her life, and I had mine. And now one can have that same sort of thing. I do have that solitary life because she's there, and I couldn't have it on my own. It would simply disappear." Bayley says he would not consider putting Murdoch in a nursing home unless she became completely unmanageable and no longer recognized him. She grows agitated when he is away, and he loses his purpose when he is alone. "I don't know what to do by myself when she's not there," he said. "Now," the second part of the book, takes up their story in the mid-1990's, when the first signs of Alzheimer's manifested themselves. It is a chilling account. Murdoch cannot find her words during a question-and-answer session in Israel. She sets off for London and returns three hours later, having forgotten where she was going. She has trouble writing, for the first time ever (the novel she is working on, "Jackson's Dilemma," turned out to be her last, and Murdoch aficionados were puzzled by the inconsistencies in character and plot). Later, when a doctor asks her who the Prime Minister is, she is stymied. "She had no idea but said to him with a smile that surely it didn't matter," Bayley writes. 'Very Incurious' About Her Own Life Mercifully, Murdoch didn't seem aware of what was happening and didn't rebel against it, partly because she never had much of a sense of self, anyway, Bayley said. "She didn't have a great deal of consciousness of her own," he said. "Coleridge mentioned the distinction between writers who live entirely in their selves and writers like Shakespeare who seem to live a complex external life inside their creations. Iris was like that. She was extremely sociable and liked to hear about other people's lives, but she was very incurious about her own." When Bayley finished the book a year ago, Murdoch could have occasional conversations. Very rarely, she still shows flickers of her old self, but her condition is much worse now. He has to lock the front door so she won't wander down the street. He can't take her swimming in the river they have always loved, for fear that she will suddenly forget how. One of the high points of their days together is when "Teletubbies," a children's television show, comes on. Murdoch is like "a very nice 3-year-old," her husband says, and she needs to be fed, bathed and changed. And there is the constant strain of meals to be prepared, of dishes to be done, of a house to keep clean. The couple have always been careless housekeepers, at best, and now Bayley admits that he has all but given up. Indeed, their house is shockingly untidy. Coats are piled high on the kitchen floor, dirty dishes cover the breakfast table, and the living room is a hodgepodge of books, old coffee cups, plants in various stages of decrepitude and what looks like a lifetime's worth of detritus. But friends say that Bayley is a classically eccentric Oxford don, one of a breed who have always been famously indifferent to their surroundings. And Bayley is adamant that he doesn't want, or need, any help. "I think I would get fussed and bothered if someone came and did it," he said. "For one thing, they'd want to do it according to much higher standards." He chuckled. "I really don't see any point in trying to clear it all up." 'It's Partly A Good Thing' Strangely enough, Bayley said, he feels the Iris of today -- the shuffling, uncomprehending Iris -- is the same Iris he knew before, the one of the sparkling conversation and the endlessly questioning mind. "I feel it's not only the same person, but it's always been the same person," he explained. "Though I have a very good memory -- I can remember where we went and what we did -- I can't remember the feel of it, you see, the sensation of a person who was completely normal. It's partly a good thing, because she seems perfectly normal to me at present." For the first time in their long life together, he says, they are completely entwined, entirely symbiotic. It is a sensation he relishes. "Every day, we are physically closer," Bayley writes in "Elegy for Iris. "And Iris's little 'mouse cry,' as I think of it, signifying loneliness in the next room, the wish to be back beside me, seems less and less forlorn, more simple, more natural. She is not sailing into the dark. The voyage is over, and under the dark escort of Alzheimer's, she has arrived somewhere. So have I." What does he mean? He tries to explain, as a visitor gets up to leave and is rewarded by the sudden, sweet flash of a smile across Murdoch's face and a delighted mumble during a goodbye embrace. "You feel that they can't do anything else to you, so to speak," he explained. "It's a loss of fear."