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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.
The usual suicidal bleeding hearts are spraying their synthetic gore all over the internet and press. Only a few months ago, they were making themselves little badges with the Arab letter 'nun', for Nazarene, which is the Muslims' soubriquet for a Christian.
Now the slogan is Je suis Charlie, referring to the late Charlie Hebdo.
Before Europe became a congeries of eunuchs, things were different.
The reputation for brutality of Heynau, the Austrian butcher, had spread throughout western Europe. In Brussels, Haynau narrowly escaped mob violence. In London, he was attacked and beaten by two draymen during a visit to what was then the Barclay Perkins Brewery. When the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi, visited England in 1864, he insisted on visiting the brewery to thank "the men who flogged Haynau". (Wikipedia)
As Chesterton wrote, "When an Austrian general who had flogged women in the conquered provinces appeared in the London streets, some common draymen off a cart behaved with the direct quixotry of Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad. He had beaten women and they beat him. They regarded themselves simply as avengers of ladies in distress, breaking the bloody whip of a German bully."
Recently, in London, a soldier was beheaded, or nearly beheaded, and no one was lynched. Christians are murdered, and our wally of a Pope tells us to be ready for martyrdom.
I am one with Charles Martel, Don John of Austria, and John Sobieski the Third. I have no wish to be a martyr. I would much rather kill than be killed, particularly by non-Catholics.
The employees of an intermittently blasphemous magazine have been shot dead, and everyone becomes a charley in the name of the golden calf of free speech. They died for the far from noble 'right' to freely insult anyone, including Catholics and the Catholic Church. They were beyond my pale. They made the tactical error of attacking people who still have left some honour and manliness. however regrettably it may manifest itself. Those people killed them, and I have no tears to shed.
I read, about 50 years ago, of two young German women sightseeing while immodestly dressed in an Italian village. The young male members of the local Catholic league of decency (or whatever) tarred and feathered them.
Unfeminised Catholics with b*lls! Bravo!
