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A Bride at 15. He was just back from the trip when he met Ariel, then 14. Durant was "almost twice her age—but I was ripe to be impressed. I was beginning to feel the need of vitality and vivacity, and she was just the symbol and summary of life." Recalls Ariel: "I was his tabula rasa. I was blank. He could write from the beginning. I became the ears that listened to him, and later, I hope, something more." The next year, over the objections of Ariel's father and a municipal judge who called Durant "a cradle robber" before granting the necessary legal consent, they were married. Ariel came to the ceremony with her roller skates slung over her shoulder.
Ariel has indeed become far more than a listener. Her research and organizational talents are a key to the Durants' steady pace. She works in a littered, beamed-ceiling study on the first floor of their aging Spanish-style house, which has possums and raccoons living in the walls. He labors under a stained glass skylight in a huge second floor room lined wall to wall with books.
They tackle each volume by scanning about 500 books, noting pertinent citations on green slips. Significant ideas and comments are recorded on white pads. Then in Ariel's study they compose an outline. "We argue rather viciously at times," says Durant, "and Mrs. Durant wins at least as often as I do." She checks Durant's tendency to romanticize women's role in history. He confesses that he felt "electric vibrations" when he met Actress Sophia Loren and tends to "fall in love with, say, Queen Elizabeth the First or Catherine the Second."
The notes are strung vertically in order beside a drafting board resting across the arms of Durant's rocking chair. There, swaying gently and munching peanuts for protein, he consults the notes and keyed reference books, writes with a ballpoint pen, in a spiral-bound notebook, aims at 250 words daily.
The Durants live by the clock, work from 8 in the morning to 10 p.m., bedtime, seven days a week. Except for summertime visits to Hollywood Bowl concerts, they break only for an after-lunch nap and a mid-afternoon hike. They stride past their sign reading BEWARE OF DOG (they have no dog), follow a never-varying, mile-long route.
The Discovery of Ignorance. Durant's step is still as sprightly as his wit, but he is conscious of his years. "In my youth," he says, "I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order." He thus argues that U.S. education could stand "a little more authority and discipline." Yet, always wryly optimistic, he predicts that "the children of the children who disturb our university presidents today will probably be very cautious and decent reactionaries." As for the ultimate questions that history and philosophy pose. Durant says: "Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."