I’ve come into Oxford on a quiet August day and as I’ve been reading Elizabeth Bowen’s A Time in Rome over these days of excessive heat, my mind has wandered to her links with this city and its university, remembering that I have previously said that some day I’ll take time to dig into the archives and find a photograph of her wearing the doctoral robes of her honorary DLitt.
That Elizabeth Bowen received an honorary doctorate from Oxford in 1956 is an established part of any summary biography. It may not have been the first time she attended such a ceremony as I have seen mention of her accompanying William Butler Yeats when he received his honorary DLitt from Oxford in 1931.
Oxford usually confers honorary degrees at Encaenia, a day of high ceremony held in June so it’s a simple enough matter to search for photographs or reports of that day in the hope of finding an image of Bowen in doctoral robes. In fact a short clip of Encaenia 1956, a few seconds of rare colour footage, is available as part of a compilation of films over the years.
Encaenia – Now and Then | University of Oxford Podcasts
The clip features Harry S Truman, former President of the United States, who was one of the honorands at Encaenia that year. His nomination for an award earlier in the year brought a rare moment of protest when the philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe, argued in Convocation that in authorising the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki he had committed a profound moral crime and that in honouring him the University would share in the guilt for those actions.
How Elizabeth Anscombe’s protest changed the course of moral philosophy – The Tablet
So we can imagine that Encaenia 1956 had an unusual touch of controversy that would have been noted by the other recipients of honorary doctorates on that day. But Elizabeth isn’t among them.
If not at Encaenia 1956 when did Elizabeth Bowen receive her honorary DLitt from the University of Oxford?
The biographies are firm about 1956 so that narrows down the hunt through the University’s Gazette with its hundreds of pages each term listing all of the official business of the University: matriculations, graduates, titles of dissertations, notices of public lectures, elections to fellowships, new regulations, and notes from meetings of both Convocation and Congregation, the historic governing bodies of the University.
And there it is.
Elizabeth was conferred with the honorary DLitt degree in a meeting of Convocation on the 25h April 1956, having been nominated and approved on the 6th March.
The Public Orator in introducing Bowen for the conferral begins by mentioning that he has been reading Encounters,
Legi nuper libellum quem hospita nostra – quamquam quid dico hospitam quae haud ita pridem pars Oxoniensium carissima fuit? – sed legi libellum titulo Congressus dictum quem haec admodum puella conscripsit, senior autem praefatione auxit atque iterum protulit.
Oxford University Gazette, vol. 86, 3 May 1956, p. 894
What little Latin I have is not up to translating the full Citation but happily my friend ChatGPT is up for it.
‘I recently read a little book by our guest — although why do I call her a guest, when not so very long ago she was a most beloved member of Oxford? — I read a little book entitled Encounters which she wrote when she was quite a young woman, but which she has published again with a new preface.
Certainly, even at that age, she knew how to observe with the keenest perception the distinctive qualities of places, things, and seasons of the year, and to apprehend, as no one else could, what each passing moment of a brief hour might bring. Indeed, from one story in particular, in which she relates her own experiences as though they were another’s, it became perfectly clear to me how agile and sensitive was her nature, and what an exceptional gift for writing she already possessed.
She was the only child of her parents, with whom she was accustomed to travel back and forth between England and the Irish estate of which she is now mistress. Thus, received as a guest in one house after another, she learnt how various are the characters of human beings, both by observing them herself and by listening to her elders.
From this, I think, was stimulated that remarkably acute and always distinctive intelligence of hers. Its particular qualities are these: to imitate human life and the movements of the mind so that nothing could be portrayed more credibly or shown more vividly; both to be able, and to choose not, to describe what is horrible and sordid, as The Heat of the Day demonstrates; to mingle the ridiculous with sharpness and seriousness with wit; to express unexpected beauties in words which seem to make them visible rather than merely read; and, finally, to have invented a new art of writing and cultivated it with the greatest labour.
What wonder, then, if her writings cross the Atlantic? Or if she herself, when invited, crosses it too?
I present to you Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, that she may be admitted honoris causa to the degree of Doctor of Letters.’
Not at Encaenia but in a more intimate ceremony Elizabeth Bowen receives a doctorate of the University and in its official introduction the University welcomes her not so much as an honoured guest but as ‘one of us’. She has ‘invented a new art of writing’ and it’s no surprise that her abilities are such that in a few weeks time she will head to America just as her books have done, and take up the Lucy Martin Donnelly Fellowship at Bryn Mawr.
Bowen, as we know, liked a party with friends. It must have been particularly pleasing to her that at Oxford she was guest of honour at a gathering of people who regarded her as one of them, a friend who had accomplished much and was about to venture on and accomplish more.
Colin Brady 