Ooops, is my privilege showing?...

I read this piece the other day, arguing that Cambridge University turned me [that is the author, one Joe Goodman] into an arrogant, entitled brat and my thoughts turned to Helen Hanff.

Joe's problem with Cambridge is summed up in this paragraph:

It's true that not all of Cambridge's excesses are compulsory. Most of the time no one's making you eat in formal hall or buy a ticket to your college May Ball, but there's no denying the resounding expectation. You'd have to be fairly strong-headed to not even attend your own college's May Ball, while "I can't afford it" is the sort of comment that causes uncomfortable looks rather than being the expected response to, "Why aren't you going to an event that costs over £100?"

I have to admit, I did not go to Cambridge, but to the Other Place. However, Goodman is clearly including Oxford in his criticism:

By putting the most promising and ambitious students who haven't grown up with a silver spoon firmly attached to their face through three years in Oxbridge's gold-plated mangle, what are we doing for the future of our country?

All I can say is that my experience of Oxford was very different from this. I rarely ate in formal hall, nor was I expected to. I did go to one Ball, but as a musician*, playing in a band. I never paid for a Ball ticket and neither did most of my friends. There simply wasn't the ubiquitous culture of expectation and entitlement that he describes. And I went to one of the posher colleges, as it happens. 

I am sure that the culture he describes exists; but I am equally sure it was not ubiquitous. Indeed, many of us mildly disliked those who subscribed to it; but we didn't spend much time worrying about them, as we were (as most undergraduates are) rather too concerned with our own interests and affairs.

Which brings me back to Helene Hanff. In one of her books (either 84 Charing Cross Road, or The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street - I forget which and someone has 'borrowed' my copy...)  she recounts how she was looking forward to her trip to London, and talking with a Londoner about it. He assured her that people find the London they are looking for: if she wanted the England of English Literature, then she would surely find it.

I wonder if the same applies to Cambridge and Oxford: that undergraduates find the University (or Varsity) they are looking for. And I bless my late Father, also a Magdalen man, who told me, before I went up, that one of the best reasons to go to Oxford was that it meant for the rest of my life, I would be immunised from any false respect for an Oxford degree.

He was right. I made many friends, and I observed many fools. I watched, from varying degrees of distance, the undergraduate lives of people who went on to become MPs in the three main parties; and made friends with people who made a career in anything from the Health Service to (hiss) Consultancy to (hiss hiss) Banking.

The only extravagance I acquired at Oxford (and the one I maintain to this day) is a liking for the excellent shoes hand-made by Ducker and Son. Other than that, I remain a tightwad. As for a sense of entitlement, perhaps that's not for me to judge; but if I acquired one, I seem to have mislaid it some time ago.

--

* On reflection, I think I overstate this: I was a drummer. As in the well-known joke: what do you call a chap who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.

Entering the controversy

Actually, there should be no debate about this. Bertie Wooster went to Magdalen. He says so quite clearly in the Code of the Woosters. 

Yes, I know what Chuffy said (that once after a bump supper, Bertie 'insisted that he was a mermaid and wanted to dive into the college fountain and play the harp.')  And I know, of course, that there is no fountain in Magdalen.

But if you are going to take the word of Chuffy, who was undoubtedly pie-eyed on the occasion and has almost certainly got confused in the detail of the affair - well, you might as well doubt that Peter Wimsey was a Balliol man.

The case is closed and I will tolerate no further discussion.

Charles Williams

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of Charles Williams in 1886. Although his name is not well-known, he is an important figure in mid 20th Century Christian Literature.

A drinking and reading friend of Lewis and Tolkien - one of the group who jokingly called themselves The Inklings, which was never a formal society or club - he was also a very prolific writer, and editor at the OUP.

He famously became friends with Lewis when each had written the other a congratulatory letter, and the letters crossed in the post. Williams liked Lewis’ The Allegory of Love; while Lewis had enjoyed Williams’ The Place of the Lion.

Both enjoyed the improbability of the crossed letters - a device neither would have dared use in fiction - so they met and became firm friends.

Williams’ novels are good but strange: much acclaimed by serious writers at the time, but never widely known. His poetry I find almost completely impenetrable.  The few other works of his I’ve read, history and criticism, have been of a uniformly high standard.

It has been pointed out that Lewis’ That Hideous Strength was certainly written ‘under the influence’ of Williams.  The Arthurian theme, totally absent from the preceding books in the trilogy, clearly reflects Williams’ fascination with Arthur, as reflected in his (impenetrable) poetry.

I have reason to believe that Williams was also the model for Lewis’ characterisation of Ransome in That Hideous Strength. There is a passage in which Ransome is described as being someone with whom women fall in love, but in a way which makes them more, not less, devoted to their own man.

My mother got to know Williams at Oxford, and I think he had precisely that effect on her. She was, by her own admission, completely intoxicated by him, leaving a lecture he had given (which she’d attended because Lewis had recommended it) thinking the only thing that mattered was hearing him speak again.

She had been surprised at the start of the lecture by two things. One was that she recognised Williams as the man who always sat in the same place in Lewis’ lectures, and laughed at all the jokes.  The second was his cockney accent - very different from the usual Oxford lecturer. (In fact, most unusually for a lecturer at Oxford in those days, and probably still, Williams had no degree).

However, within a minute of his lecture starting, she forgot the accent and was enchanted: to such an extent that, quite out of character, the next time Lewis was due to lecture, she got to Magdalen Hall early, and sat herself in the seat next to Williams’ habitual one. She had no further plan, no opening gambit; she was, she claimed, the greenest of green undergraduates.

However, Williams arrived a bit early, sat down beside her, and started to talk to her as though they were old friends resuming a conversation.

They became good friends, and Williams would read and comment on her English essays.  These comments ranged from: ‘Oh, no. You should write out 50 times “sacred bard, forgive me!”’ to ‘You write like an angel and think like a saint.’

Williams, like Lewis, lived and died an Anglican. My mother converted to Catholicism in order to marry my father (who had just converted himself, but that’s another story for another day). They are all now dead, so please say a prayer for all four of them.

Requiescant in pace.

A strange coincidence?...

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, I had occasion to write to the Chaplain, Fr Walter Drumm.

I was less obnoxious then, and wrote him a very gentle note pointing out that it was against the law of the Church for the congregation to join in the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, quoting the appropriate Vatican document, and noting that he never encouraged the practice, but suggesting that perhaps he should discourage it.

Weeks passed by and nothing happened.  Then, right at the end of term, I got a brief hand-written note from him, saying 'Thank you for your comments, which I have noted.'

I thought that was inadequate at the time, and I still do.  Either I was right, in which case he should, I believe have addressed the issue, or explained why he thought it inappropriate to do so; or alternatively I was wrong, in which case, I believe that he should have explained my error.

But to be honest, I haven't been brooding on this for the intervening thirty years.  I had forgotten about it until this afternoon, when I received an email.

This one was from the Diocese of Brentwood, and it read: Thank you for your email, the contents of which have been noted.

This one was in response to my email asking if it was really appropriate to invite Jon Cruddas to address a Catholic Justice and Peace conference; given that, despite proclaiming himself a Catholic, he consistently, publicly and unrepentantly opposes Catholic teaching on Justice and Peace issues (such as the protection of marriage, the rights of unborn children etc) in both word and deed.

Are these people taught that this is the way to (fail to) answer questions they don't want to answer?  Is there a handbook somewhere for dealing with cheeky proles like me who ask impertinent questions?  I think we should be told (but of course, if I asked, I would be told: Thank you for your question, which I have noted.)

Off to Oxford

Bernie and I are off to Oxford this weekend. I'm picking her up from her University, and she's visiting friends who are studying there, while I have a reunion of old friends, some of whom I haven't seen since student days.

I am also looking forward to Mass at the Oratory, my late mother's parish church, and of course to a few hours in the wonderfully refurbished Ashmolean.