Volume 9, Number 7 · October 26, 1967
A Don in the World
By W.H. Auden
Memories
by C.M. Bowra
Harvard, 369 pp., $7.95
When I was twenty, I was more scared of 'Maurice Bowra' than I have been of any other human being before or since. He appeared as an accusing figure in a nightmare and when, while I was traveling with my father in Yugoslavia, we unexpectedly ran into him, I was so petrified that I could not remember his name. Behind my fear, of course, lay envy. To the youth I then was, uncertain of himself, gauche, shy, and, therefore, brash, he embodied all those qualities, social poise, elegance, wit, worldliness, which I most longed to possess and despaired of ever possessing. For an intellectual undergraduate of my generation—in those days we were called aesthetes—to belong to 'Maurice's' circle was to be 'in.' I was not 'in,' but dearly wished I could be. Those who did belong, Harold Acton, Brian Howard, Cyril Connolly, John Betjeman, John Sparrow, Isaiah Berlin, to mention only a few, highly individual though each of them was, all possessed, I think, one trait in common. At an age when most young men are floundering about, they were already formed characters, that is to say, their interests, their outlook on the world, their manner of gesture and speech, were already what they would remain for the rest of their lives. The one I knew best, since we were exact contemporaries, was John Betjeman, and he made the kind of impression on me which I imagine Max Beerbohm must have made on Oxford Undergraduates in the 1890s.
Review, 2310 words
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