Everyday Philosophy : Even Great Thinkers Have to Yell Foul When Overcharged on a Water Bill

WILL DURANT, the philosopher-historian, lived for nearly 40 years with his wife, Ariel, in a Spanish-style home on Briarcliff Road above Hollywood Boulevard. He died in 1981 at 96, only two weeks after Ariel.

I visited the Durants once, after the publication of “The Age of Napoleon,” the final book in their 11-volume “Story of Civilization.” Dr. Durant answered the door himself, a short man with an unwrinkled pink face, a shock of white hair and a white brush mustache. Even shorter, Ariel peered at me over his shoulder like Tinkerbell.

“Dr. Durant?” I asked perfunctorily.

“Let’s get one thing settled right now,” he said. “Please call us Will and Ariel.”

Thus did the eminent Dr. Durant, a hero of mine since my college days, dispose of the distance between us. One hardly expects to call eminent philosophers by their first names. Nor does one think of eminent philosophers as having ordinary household problems like the rest of us. Dr. Durant, one would suppose, would hardly worry about his plumbing or his water and power bill.

However, I have received a letter from R. W. Bernhard of Whittier, who enclosed a copy of a letter Dr. Durant wrote to the Department of Water and Power in November, 1977, complaining about his bill. Bernhard worked for the department for 35 years and recognized the historical value of the letter; he tried to get the original, but someone beat him to it.

The letter read as follows:

Your bill for service of water and power to property at 5608 Briarcliff Road . . . is surprisingly high in the water charge. Your bill for the period June 23-Aug. 23 was, for water, $32.05; for Aug. 23-Oct. 23 it is $71.92, a rise of $39.87, or over 100% increase. I have inquired as to possible leaks on our property; I am assured that there is no sign of a leak. We have had no exceptional use of water in the last two months.

Will you please send a man to check our meter and see if it is working normally? And will you check your records to see if you can certify this unusual charge?

Thank you,

Will Durant

Bernhard notes that “the inspection made by the department’s representative revealed that the water meter had been over-read, and since the bill had already been paid, Will Durant’s account was credited with the amount overcharged.”

It may be interesting to compare this letter, showing the practical side of Dr. Durant, with one he wrote me in 1979. Someone had asked me to name “the sage of Los Angeles,” and after considering many candidates, I selected Dr. Durant and Ariel, as a pair, since one could hardly think of one without the other.

Dr. Durant wrote as follows:

Dear Jack:

That was a pleasant game you played with us recently, nominating us as the Solon and Theodora of our time and neighborhood. In our saner moments , we know, of course, that wisdom is a repeatedly appearing and disappearing mirage on the road of learning and that the child knows as much of cosmic truth as Einstein did in the ecstasy of his final formula. So the best we can do is to seek perspective and modesty (which are almost definitive of wisdom) and to see the part or the moment in the light of the whole--which the part can’t ever see. I am alarmed to note how few of the dogmas dear to my youth have kept their charm through my plentiful but inadequate years. So I beg you to take me down from that statue, and receive me as a friend and reader, another babe playing games with the world.

Yours to the end,

Will Durant

P.S. Will in his usual modesty has refused to accept your high estimate of him. Nor can I accept your kindness in including me. I am just a contented follower and hope to continue as such.

Regards from

Ariel

Gentle as they were, Will and Ariel Durant were not the kind of people you’d want to overcharge.

When I interviewed them, I asked if they were contemplating a 12th volume in their series.

“He’s always a little bit pregnant,” Ariel said.

“Volume XII,” Will said dreamily, as if to himself. “The 19th Century. We might call it ‘The Age of Darwin.’ That was the most important event of the century. . . .”

He came back to the moment; the self-mocking smile returned. “The body is a machine in which every organ has a computerized date for its collapse. Now, take the heart--if you can guarantee me five more years of health . . . .”

“Go to it, man,” Ariel said.

”. . . I’ll do the 19th Century.”

“Go to it.”

“At least,” Will said, “it would give a meaning to every day. It’s a great blessing to wake up in the morning and know what you have to do.”