I met John Bayley first in December 1959 when he and a panel of dons interviewed me for a place at New College. I remember his beatific smile, his courtesy, and his stammer, of which I had been warned by my English master D. M. Thomas, later of White Hotel fame, who had read English at New College. He used the stammer brilliantly as an after-dinner speaker. I failed to get in, but tried again the following year and was accepted.
John Bayley was my academic and Moral Tutor for the next three years. He was a brilliant scholar and teacher. I owe him much, including my love of M. R. James's ghost stories and the novels of Raymond Chandler.
He had an amazing epigrammatic and lapidary wit. Once, during a tutorial, he looked out of the window, remarking, "There goes the Domestic Manager. He always looks as though he has just murdered his wife." The official in question always wore a black suit, I think a moustache, and a 1930s, serial murderer smile. Perfect.
Of an aged don, always late for dinner so that no one could eat until he arrived in Hall, he said, "He makes me feel like Lear's daughters".
When I got a Third in Finals, he wrote me a delightful note saying that it was the most respectable class of degree "see the Sunday papers, passim". He even wrote a reply to my mother's thank you letter. She, of course kept his letter, and I still have it.
He was, like many of those whom I have good reason to thank, completely agnostic, one of the reasons my hope is in Universalism.
John Bayley, gentleman and scholar. May he rest in peace.
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