Winchester College Publication Winchester College Classic Talks | Page 10

Gilbert Murray (1908–36: Figures
17–18) had equally little regard for
Bywater. There are many beautiful things
in Greek literature, he remarked: I dare
say Bywater knows that, but I cannot see
him ever persuading anyone else of it.
Most would say, I think, that Murray has
been the most distinguished holder of the
chair: maybe not the greatest scholar,
though that is arguable, but surely the
greatest person. He was a man of letters
as much as a scholar, and a man of the
theatre too: his verse translations of Greek
Figure 17 Gilbert Murray; by
tragedy were widely performed and made
George Charles Beresford, vintage
the plays accessible to a much broader
print, 1916
audience. He himself figures, under a very
light disguise, as a character in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. He was
a public figure in other ways too, a prominent liberal (and not loved for that
in Christ Church: he would dine on Friday nights, when he could invite
undergraduates of other colleges and have someone to talk to), and then one
who played a leading role after the First World War in the League of Nations.
In old age this lifelong teetotaller was told to drink half a bottle of sherry every
evening for his health. I’ve been looking for a doctor like that all my life.
Figure 18 Gilbert Murray, aged 88; by Lawrence Toynbee, 1950
18
E. R. Dodds (1936–60: Figure 19) was the
unexpected name that Murray put forward
to Stanley Baldwin. Dodds was a lecturer
at Birmingham University at the time, best
known for his expertise on Neoplatonism
(or ‘Neoplatonic poppycock’, as an
unsympathetic Oxford don put it). The
succession was expected to go to one of
two local Oxford heavyweights, but
Murray did not have much regard for
either. Dodds was duly made to feel
unwelcome both in the university and in
the college; he remarked later that he
would have been much happier had he
Figure 19 E. R. Dodds; by
been appointed to another post that came
Walter Stoneman, February 1945
up in the same year, that of Head
Gardener at St John’s. ‘What did you do in the war, Doddsy?’ was the
unfriendly greeting of one of the disappointed Oxford candidates, Maurice
Bowra, and this touched a strong reason for his initial unpopularity: Dodds
was an Irishman and felt that the Great War was not his war, so was effectively
a conscientious objector; Bowra had fought in the trenches. Dodds was an
undergraduate during the war, and the Master of University College made it
clear to him that he would not be welcome to return and finish his course.
Feelings towards him warmed (he was in fact an extremely nice man, with an
impish and rebellious streak: I met him a few times), and by the end of his
tenure he was recognised as a very great scholar, arguably the best of the lot.
He too was a man of
letters, a great friend of
T. S. Eliot and a patron
of Louis MacNeice. His
immense feeling for
poetry comes over in his
writings, particularly his
edition of Euripides’
Bacchae.
Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones
(1960–89: Figure 20),
the first whom I knew
well, partly because his
daughter Antonia was
my college pupil (that
Figure 20 Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones
19