A man who sat with US presidents, prime ministers, and monarchs, giving them his valued counsel, Herb London was known from his ubiquity on television and in newspapers as a public intellectual and policy expert who could range effortlessly across the world’s most complex and difficult issues. But Herb was also so much more, a remarkable Renaissance man the likes of which we may never see again: a man of letters and action, a humanist, a deep soul who traversed the halls of political power, an aesthete who loved the arts and understood their power. One of the last times I saw Herb, we converged by happenstance at the Frick Museum, each of us there to glimpse the Dutch Mona Lisa, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, before she flew back to Holland.
The first time I met Herb, he was lecturing on the demographics of Western Europe, about the ominously low birthrate and the implications for a troubled future he predicted. It was not a topic I was close to, but after his gripping talk we discussed wider cultural matters, and a wonderful friendship was born. During the next two decades, I came to see Herb, demographically speaking, as the one man in America we needed to clone.
Herb had the most capacious mind and the biggest heart; he was generous, altruistic, honest—and if you knew him well he was the definition of loving. He was always curious and always learning, but there did not seem to be anything he did not already know. He also knew everyone in every sphere, not just monarchs—consider for instance his weekend with the rock group Aerosmith in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Whenever I spent time with Herb, I came away wanting to tell the world that he was the greatest all-around guy in the world, a fact that a good number of significant people already knew.
As an undergraduate at Columbia College, Herb was pre-med until he was inspired by legendary professor Jacques Barzun, author of From Dawn to Decadence and many other daunting books, whose knowledge of human history was beyond masterful. Barzun was an intellectual giant, and Herb followed in the footsteps of his mentor. Unlike so many intellectuals, however, Herb was the antithesis of an ivory tower nerd. Herb not only played basketball at Columbia; he led the Ivy League in rebounds, and he was drafted by the NBA (only a knee injury kept him from being a professional basketball player). Herb was a gentleman and a scholar, but also a juggernaut. In addition to being a basketball star, Herb was a pop star. In 1958, he sang the hit single “We’re Not Going Steady.” The money he made as a crooner helped him pay for college.
After earning his BA at Columbia, Herb earned his PhD in history at NYU, where he became a professor and pioneering educator. He founded NYU’s Gallatin School and served as its first dean, but his concern about education included far more than universities. He was focused on the general decline of education in America. He involved himself in pressing political matters outside the insular walls of academia. He had benefited from a good public education, and he wanted every child to have that opportunity. One of Herb’s high school teachers told him to write at least one page every day; he did that and more, publishing thirty books.
A true Renaissance man does not limit himself to excelling in only two or three disciplines, but Herb excelled in so many areas his life’s course did not seem possible. He was, though, an extremely modest man, never one to speak of his accomplishments, always quick to downplay them. During our many lunches, I somehow managed to pry some of his outsized personal history out of him. In addition to basketball star and pop star while still in college, Herb was also a baseball standout at Columbia. He played first base, and he could hit. Back when the field was still on the quad, Herb hit a towering home run over the library. No other Columbia College baseball player had ever hit a home run over the library, with one stellar exception, Lou Gehrig, and the Columbia Spectator boldly called London the second coming of the Yankees slugger.
Dropping pre-med at Columbia did not please Herbert Ira London’s Jewish mother, but with all his other talents and interests how could he possibly be a medical doctor too? He made it his life’s mission to cure America, especially its education system, and thereby bequeath a future to every child.
Herb was more than old enough to be my father, but whenever we were together we were just two Columbia boys talking the way boys do once they have been grabbed by the wisdom and beauty of the great books, spurred by The Iliad, The Odyssey, the Greek Tragedies, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, Virgil, Dante, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Descartes, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and others. Herb and I had both been formed—from the last of our teen years to our earliest twenties—by these timeless authors and the lifetime of questions they raised in our minds. We had this bond.
Sitting with Herb and talking through ideas with him brought out the best in me for two decades. There was, sometime in the early 2000s, talk of Herb being made Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities. He asked me if I would come with him to Washington and be his number two, deputy chair. I said yes immediately, imagining Herb and me riding into DC to bring the humane back to the humanities, in addition to reason and beauty.
The New York Times, in an obituary by Sam Roberts, called Herb a “conservative savant” and a “social critic.” Savant he was. And he was an incisive critic, but not one of those critics who can only critique. Herb could envision and build like few, an optimist who improved his vision with the openness of his mind, his stalwart principles, and what he called MAPTO, his acronym for Mental and Physical Toughness. If he had a family crest or shield, MAPTO is the inscription that would have been on it.
Herb once told me a story about a Columbia basketball game in which an opposing player’s leg hit the back of his knee. Herb went down, his six-foot-five body flat on the hardwood floor, his concerned teammates in a circle around him. Out of an eye, Herb sees his mother walking down an aisle in the bleachers, down toward the basketball court, then onto the court itself and into the circle of Columbia players surrounding their big forward. Herb’s mother bends down, insisting on knowing if her boy is alright. Confronted by public humiliation and physical pain, Herb performed, speaking, as always, the words he needed to speak: “Mom, I’m fine. Now please go back to your seat.”
Herb London’s athletic prowess was not part of his identity as a public figure, as it was for former New York Knick and US Senator Bill Bradley, but his background in sports was the center of his fearlessness and toughness. When you lead the Ivy League in rebounds, you are a guy who takes countless elbows to your body and head, but still you are the guy who comes away with the ball firmly in your grip. Herb did the same in the arena of high-stakes public debate.
Herb was an old-fashioned liberal, a thinker in the manner of John Stuart Mill, a man who spoke the principles of freedom also with his actions. When he was in high school in the 1950s, Herb was the only white member of a doo wop quartet, and he helped his Jamaica High School basketball team win a NYC championship. Herb played sports and music with black athletes and musicians in the 1950s; it was natural for him to become a part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Herb was never intimidated—not by anything. He was respectful, but he did not brook crap. If a US Senator gave Herb bunkum or indicated he was going to commit a wrong act, Herb went straight after him. If another US Senator running for president solicited Herb’s assistance but then admitted he had no interest in the economy, Herb gave him straight rebuke. On one occasion, when Herb and I were discussing Israel and the wider world, he confided in me that he had had recently sat with President George W. Bush and given him advice about Israel. Herb told me that President Bush responded thus: “Don’t worry, Herb. I won’t fuck it up.” Herb, who never used cuss words, told me: “Needless to say, he f***ed it up.”
Herb was the kind of honest public intellectual we do not encounter anymore, a big mind dishing out criticism wherever deserved, critical of Democrats and Republicans alike. Perhaps one cannot do as much in the world as Herb London did and not see everything from all perspectives. Herb and I often discussed the way the far left was ruining English departments—and the humanities, academia, and the world—with wayward postmodern theories. We also often spoke about how the political right ignored—deleteriously—the importance of the arts and culture.
Herb was simply too honest for politics, and he knew it, but he nevertheless ran for public office a few times, including a run for Governor of New York, and he garnered the most votes in state history by any candidate running on the Conservative line, the Republicans having kept him off their line.
For many years Herb ran the New York Discussion Group, a gathering of writers, professors, journalists, and public intellectuals who met every couple of months to listen to a short presentation by a luminary and leap into rather rigorous discussion, polite but fierce argument during which various accomplished participants endeavored to invalidate the presentation of the invited speaker. (Yes, often there was edifying concurrence.) The New York Discussion Group was made in Herb’s image, and it was everything that free and open debate should be. I was almost always the youngest member in attendance, and I sat, whenever possible, next to either New York Civil Rights Coalition President Michael Meyers or former Partisan Review editor Edith Kurzweil. When I sat next to Michael, I had to work hard to keep him from making me laugh, because Herb did not appreciate side conversations. When I sat next to Edith, I was reminded of the grace and intelligence that had once characterized the New York magazine world. Before the beginning of one meeting, I told Edith that I was contemplating starting a new literary magazine. “You would have to be absolutely crazy to start a literary magazine in today’s world,” she replied. “But let me know if you need any help.” Herb brought us all together knowing that our best thoughts might be fruitful and multiply.
Herb was always busy doing more things than most people could imagine, flying around the globe to meet with world leaders, writing books and articles, running major think tanks, but he put in the extra effort to keep the New York Discussion Group part of the intellectual fabric of NYC. It was simply another of Herb’s self-appointed tasks to nurture the cultural community of New York. His devotion was a model, his adroit leadership was peerless, and he was beloved.
Herb started every meeting of the discussion group by giving a short introductory bio of everyone in attendance, mainly for the benefit of new or infrequent guests, but also because he understood the magic of formality. For a couple of years, Herb kept ending his introduction of me by saying, “And he just published a terrific book on Shakespeare.” I corrected Herb a few times, pointing out that my recent book on Renaissance literature had only one chapter on Shakespeare, but Herb never registered my correction when he delivered my bio. Since Herb’s passing, I have completed three books on Shakespeare, and the first will be published next year. In retrospect I see that my old dear friend was giving me intentional prodding, telling me what he expected me to do. Herb was the most astute mentor; he mentored scores of people during his lifetime. He had an uncanny knowledge of what others needed to do.
The first time I met with Herb in his office, I was led in by Laddyma Thompson, his longtime aide-de-camp. No sooner than I took my seat in front of his desk, Doctor London had to take a phone call from a young unknown reporter who had a scoop that threatened to bring down the New York Stock Exchange. I sat and listened as Herb guided the young reporter through every move he needed to make to survive; that reporter, after following Herb’s advice, soon became a household name. There was no end to Herb’s savvy, no end to his generosity. Beneath all of Herb’s numerous and varied accomplishments is a mountain of good deeds done to help others that remains invisible. Selfless to a fault, he could never do enough for those in whom he believed.
Every few years I would repeat to Herb a joke I could not resist, because I partly believed it was not a joke. I told him that had he not hurt his knee, he would have played in the NBA (like Bill Bradley), and had he played in the NBA he could have run for president. If he had not hurt his knee, I continued, he could have been the first Jewish president of the United States. Herb tossed off this suggestion with a shake of his head and wave of his hand, which is why I waited a couple of years to repeat it. I was only pretending it was a joke. It was my dream.
I count my friendship with Herb London as one of my life’s blessings. Every lunch we enjoyed over two decades was like the best of family events. Herb was a family man who always asked first after you and your family. He spoke proudly about his daughters, Stacy, Nancy, and Jaclyn. I will always remember when Herb and his wonderful wife, Vicky, came to our apartment for dinner and my wife, Vered, sent Herb home with a box of Mandelbrot she baked; Herb said it reminded him of his mother.
That time I ran into Herb at the Frick Museum, I did not know it would be one of the last times I would see him before his health declined. He was alone, fitting an homage to Vermeer’s revered masterpiece into his busy executive schedule. I was with my older daughter, Hannah. You can tell everything about a person from the way he speaks to children, and Herb spoke to my daughter with natural rapport, deep feeling, and genuine interest, as if she were an important part of the future in which he had a stake. He made an immense impression on her. After we parted, my daughter asked me, “Who was that man?” I tried to tell her, but I knew I would never be able to describe adequately the amazing marvel Herb London was.