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"Passing Through Nature..."

Notes on which any true biography of W. R. A. should be based.

(Hamlet  Act 1, Sc. II)

On the 7th January 1951 Ashby started this notebook, which was discovered by his wife after his death in 1972.  There are 60 pages in a small 6" x 4.5" book.

[Written between 1951 and 1957 when aged between 47 and 53.]

"Let me make it clear that I have no interest in giving a false picture here. These notes are not for publication in my lifetime so I have no motive to falsify them."
Page 13

"I shall not re-read these notes, once written, for second thoughts are apt to falsify under the guise of correcting. If I repeat myself, the discrepancies will probably be revealing.
Page 23

"Here are two quotations that I consider to be peculiarly apt personally. [From the Everyman Dictionary.]"

'By labour and intent study [which I take to be my portion in this life] joined by the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let it die'.
Milton.

'The world knows nothing of its greatest men'.
Sir Henry Taylor.
Page 23.

"The first fact is that my research had no relation to my daily work. …..When I was qualified it was the same, work on the brain, of the type
recorded in my notebooks was to me merely a delightful amusement, a hobby I could weave complex and delightful patterns of pure thought, untroubled by social, financial or other distractions."
Page 7.

"Even now, though work on it has become my main job, I dislike finding it arouses much interest. If people get interested I tend to cool their
enthusiasm with suggestions that it is not very important, that there is lots more to be found out, and so on. I have repeatedly found myself
abruptly changing the subject so as to turn the conversation off it. I still tend to regard the whole matter as my private business and to resent intrusion."
Page ?.

"Yet from the earliest age I knew my real ambition was to be nothing."
Page 10.

Page 13
"My other ambition is common to all of us who lack courage: I hope to be able to endure what comes."
Page 13.


"For 40 years I hated change of all sorts, wanting only to stay where I was. I didn’t want to grow up, didn’t want to leave my mother, didn’t want to go from school to Cambridge, didn’t want to go to hospital, and so on. I was unwilling at every step. Now I seem to be changed to the opposite; ……………."
Page 36.