John Edward Courtenay Bodley (6 June 1853 – 28 May 1925) was an English civil servant, known for his writings on France.
Life edit
He was the son of the pottery owner Edward Fisher Bodley (1815–1881),[1] and his wife Mary Ridgway Bodley, and brother of the pottery owner Edwin James Drew Bodley.[2] He was educated at Mill Hill School and studied at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1873 to 1876.[3] An active Freemason, he approached Oscar Wilde, then also an undergraduate, and introduced him to a Masonic Lodge in Oxford.[4] Richard Ellmann[5] attributes to Bodley a long, spiteful New York Times article that appeared on Wilde, on 21 January 1882. "Bodelino" was a member of James McNeill Whistler's circle in Paris.[6]
He was secretary to Charles Dilke, from 1880. Initially Dilke thought him frivolous, but he came to play a major part in Dilke's official work and private life.[7] He was a witness in the divorce case that broke Dilke's career.[8] He subsequently believed that Dilke's downfall was caused by Joseph Chamberlain.[9]
A personal friend of Cardinal Manning ("almost certainly his most intimate non-Catholic friend", and Manning's preferred choice as biographer[10]), he was his biographer only in a short work.[11]
Political writing edit
Bodley's political writings are in the general tradition of Hippolyte Taine, whom Bodley knew.[12] When Émile Boutmy, a follower of Taine, had his work on England in the same vein translated into English,[13] Bodley wrote an introduction.
Shane Leslie, a friend, described him as "one of the last cultured Europeans".[14] A 1928 work by Charles Maurras about him was entitled L'anglais qui a connu la France;[15] Maurras had already studied Bodley in 1902, in Deux témoins de la France.
Works edit
- France (1898, two volumes)[16]
- L'Anglomanie et les Traditions Françaises (1899)
- The Coronation of Edward the Seventh: A Chapter of European and Imperial History (1903). The official account.
- The Church In France (1906)
- Cardinal Manning; The decay of idealism in France; The Institute of France (1912)
- L'Age Mécanique et le Déclin de l'idéalisme en France (1913)
- The Romance of the Battle-Line in France (1920)
Family edit
He was a descendant of Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library.[17] He married Evelyn Frances Bell but they divorced in 1908. His sons were Ronald Victor Courtenay Bodley and the artist Josselin Reginald Courtenay Bodley (1893-1974), who were also the joint dedicatees of France. His daughter Ava married Ralph Wigram in 1925,[18] and John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, in 1941.[19]
References edit
- Shane Leslie (1930), Memoir of John Edward Courtenay Bodley
Notes edit
- ^ E.F. Bodley & Co.
- ^ Gilley, Sheridan. "Bodley, John Edward Courtenay". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37203. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- "E F Bodley & Co, thepotteries.org". Retrieved 2 June 2017. - ^ "Balliol College Library: Jowett Papers - Appendix". Archived from the original on 10 May 2009. Retrieved 1 April 2008.
- ^ OSCAR WILDE Freemasons
- Jonathan Fryer, Wilde (2004), p. 16. - ^ Oscar Wilde (1987), p. 169.
- ^ The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler.
- ^ Roy Jenkins, Dilke (1965 edition), p. 147.
- ^ Jenkins, p. 287.
- ^ Jenkins, p. 355.
- ^ Jenkins, p. 367.
- ^ "CARDINAL MANNING; Mr. Bodley's Intimate Sketch of the Great Catholic Prelate". New York Times. 16 March 1913. Retrieved 9 August 2008.
- ^ Silvanus Phillips Thompson, The Life of Lord Kelvin (reprinted 1977), note p. 913.
- ^ The English People: a study of their political philosophy (1904).
- ^ Salutation to Five, p. 14.
- ^ The Englishman who has known France.
- ^ "Review of France by J. E. C. Bodley". The Quarterly Journal. 188: 160–182. July 1898.
- ^ How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Pocket Books. 1981. p. 280. ISBN 978-0-671-44530-0. Retrieved 12 July 2010.
- ^ Mary Soames, Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills By Winston Churchill, Clementine Churchill (1999), note p. 420.
- ^ Burke's Landed Gentry of Scotland
External links edit
