"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol09)

of other worlds is in A given to Dolbear (and then in B to Guildford).
It would not suit my father's purpose, because in 'The Ramblings of
Ramer' he wished to allow his own ideas the scope, in the form of a
discussion and argument, that they would never have had in fact, in an
actual meeting of the Inklings. The professional knowledge and
intellectual interests of the members of the Notion Club are such as to
make this symposium possible. On p. 149 I have given the second
version of a title-page, in which after the author's 'aside to the
audience', warning them 'not to look for their own faces in my
mirror', there follows a list of the members of the Club. At this stage
only six members were listed (plus Cameron); and of these six, Ramer
is Professor of Finno-Ugric, Guildford is a Comparative Philologist,
and Loudham has 'special interests in Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon',
while the chemist Dolbear 'concerns himself with psychoanalysis and
related aspects of language'. At this stage Frankley is a lecturer in
French, changed to the Clarendon Reader in English Literature, 'with
a taste for the Romance literatures and a distaste for things Germanic',
while the statement of Jeremy's position and interests is much as in the
final list. Ramer, Jeremy, Guildford and Frankley all have 'a taste for
romances of travel in Space and Time.'
The enlarged list of members in the final form (pp. 159 - 60), most of
whom do not have even walk-on parts, served the purpose, I suppose,
of creating an impression of a more amorphous group surrounding the
principals. The polymathy of the monk Dom Jonathan Markison
extends to some very recondite knowledge of Germanic origins, while
Ranulph Stainer appears in Part Two as a sceptical and rather superior
onlooker at the strange proceedings. The surname of the apparently
speechless undergraduate John Jethro Rashbold is a translation of
Tolkien (Toll-kuhn: see Letters no. 165 and note 1). In Part Two
appears 'old Professor Rashbold at Pembroke', the Anglo-Saxon
scholar described by Lowdham as 'a grumpy old bear' (p. 256 and note
72). There are no doubt other hidden puns and jokes in the list of
members.
In my view it would be useless to seek even any 'intellectual equival-
ence' with historical persons, let alone portraiture (for a list of those
who came often - but not all at the same period - to the Inklings, with
brief biographies, see Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, Appendix
A). The fact that Lowdham is 'loud' and makes jokes often at inappro-
priate moments derives from Dyson (but he was wittier than Lowd-
ham), yet Lowdham is the very antithesis of Dyson in his learning and
interests; no doubt Frankley's horror borealis is a reminiscence of



Dyson also, though it is profoundly un-Dysonian to have read
mediaeval works on Saint Brendan (p. 265). In earlier drafts of the list
of members Dolbear has no position in the University, and with his
red hair and beard and his nickname in the Club (see Letters no. 56) he
can be seen as a sort of parody of Havard. But these things are
marginal to the ideas expounded and debated in the Papers; essen-