Passage of the years tends to dull the surprise of the unexpected transatlantic call reporting another tolling of the bell - but nothing could prepare his friends for the departure of Allen "Teddy" Figgis earlier this month. He had, after all, a timeless quality about him, an impish claim to immortality, which he would of course have modestly denied: his knack of always being around, like Eliot's Macavity.
This quietly indispensable, almost feline quality, the ability to deliver the mot juste with gentle accuracy yet without fanfare, leaves an indelible series of impressions: on the suburban child for whom the back room of the old Hodges Figgis was (apart from musty parental Front Square rooms and the annual pilgrimage to St Patrick's) the only city landmark, the scene of voracious reading and early instruction in the arts of bargaining, both traits patiently encouraged by the ever-indulgent proprietor;
on the uncertain freshman, looking perhaps to find his own voice in a traditional chorus, for whom twice-weekly races around the bay on the Figgis flagship Alata, a venerable Dublin Bay "21", symbolised sorties into life and thought and seeded the courage to chart one's own course. During one particular gruelling summer of study, an envelope arrived from Teddy containing - along with an invitation to sail - a small nail-file wrapped in a crust of bread: even the firmest taskmaster could not but yield to such typically Figgidean strategy; on the opinionated sophister, to whom self-satisfied formal Inaugural invitation, Teddy rsvp'd politely enquiring whether "Christmas decorations would be in order", followed in due course by a deftly deflating missive of thanks and praise.
And on and on across 30 more years - a needed stint on his payroll at the Frankfurt Book Fair; kindness in troubled times; balance in extreme moments; inexhaustible hospitality; solicitude for others while firmly deflecting the spotlight of gratitude or concern from himself, all the while abuilding his own monument, from books to encyclopaedias to (finally) an actual cathedral ... and this emigrant admirer knew hardly the half of it.
At length came the good fortune of a cup of strong coffee and what must have been a pint of his subversive strawberry cocktail on a rainy afternoon this past summer in Castle Street - in the shadow of beloved city walls surrounded by the works of artists he had befriended over the years - and beguiling talk of reviving the Encyclopaedia on disk and online and, who knows, even interactively on the Web ... a proposal someone should take seriously in his memory.
And then the telephone, on a sunny Colorado afternoon, dimming the day's brightness - but there are books with his imprint around me and the memory of a gentle, generous, "piously irreverent" man, in his way a quiet agent of change, but above all a man who can be called - in any accent - "decent". Long may we observe his decency! G.S.