Health and His Preoccupation With It

"This attack...was a rather terrifying ordeal for him and for us, as it took the form of a nightmare that sent him flying from his bed turning on lights and shouting in an effort to wake himself up. It had some connection with his war experiences and absolutely none with his heart, but no amount of evidence produced by doctors could convince him; for him everything pointed to the one terrible illness."  A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 8

A "classic example of" Howard's hypochondria "took place one winter in Austria, where we had gone for a skiing holiday. My father met an old school friend and, encouraged by this, consumed three cocktails before dinner—a quite disastrous business, because he had no head for alcohol and seldom drank more than one drink in a whole evening. There was nothing unusual about his appearance, and we duly trooped in to dinner, where, after ordering what he wanted to eat with perfect clarity and some thought, he suddenly folded his table napkin into a small cushion, placed it under his head, and sank to the floor. This naturally caused great consternation in a crowded dining room, and people clustered around his prostrate form while he groaned, 'My heart, my heart...Ruth fetch a doctor...only three White Ladies with my old school friend...my heart.' My mother was at first distressed, and I rushed from the room horrified by my father making what I considered a terrible spectacle of himself. When I returned a few moments later, he was sitting perfectly normally at the table, trying to pretend that nothing had happened. I gathered later that he had been nettled into getting to his feet by the man at the next table, who had assured my mother, 'He's all right, madam, he's just had one over the eight.' Father pretended to feel genuinely hurt that anyone could have mistaken a serious coronary attack for intoxication, but he laughed guiltily about it for years afterward." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 8

"The desire to escape from people and relax was perhaps due in part to boredom with party conversation, but it also stemmed from an inner conviction that his physique could not stand becoming overtired. My father was infected with that incurable disease of many or most actors: hypochondria. He never moved without a perfect battery of pills and medicines." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 7

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