[ilds] Cambridge or not

[Bruce Redwine]

David,

Get a hold of MacNiven's book, Lawrence Durrell:  A Biography (London  
1998), and read footnote 71, p. 697, which says, in part, "Neither  
university [Oxford or Cambridge] kept systematic records of failed  
candidates for admission during the years Larry might have applied."   
MacNiven also says, "it is probably that he [Durrell] would have been  
accepted somewhere, given a modicum of perseverance."  In short,  
failing the Oxbridge entrance exams is probably one of Durrell's tall  
stories, told repeatedly, with subsequent embellishment, for whatever  
reason.  I suspect Durrell came to believe his own stories, in which  
he portrayed himself with glamorous, Byronic flourishes.

Durrell could have thought of himself as a rustic version of Oscar  
Wilde, but Wilde had superb academic credentials (Magdalen College,  
Oxford:  first in Mods, double first in Finals) to stand up to the  
English Establishment.  I would offer that Durrell felt compelled to  
invent the story of how he acquired his own bona fides, and that story  
follows the plot line of outsider (Irishman), thrust into cultural  
conflict (Black Book and English death), rejected by Establishment  
(failing Oxbridge exams), and exiled and redeemed (flight to Corfu and  
self-discovery).

Durrell undoubtedly felt at home among the country folk of Languedoc.   
You describe well some of his most appealing traits, but I don't think  
"he hated all that academic stuff."  After all, he attended one OMG  
conference and accepted an invitation to teach at Caltech for three  
months.  By the accounts I've read and heard, he had a great time at  
both places, especially when given the chance to flirt with the ladies.


Bruce



On Oct 1, 2009, at 8:08 PM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote:

> I wonder if the question of Larry's efforts to attend Cambridge and  
> or Oxford could be settled by inquiring after the fact to those  
> institutions??
>
> Surely they would have records??
>
> Be that as it may, I sense in Larry a deliberate anti  
> intellectualism. Perhaps as an overprivileged raj colonial he felt  
> no real need for the university. Perhaps as an aspiring bohemian  
> writer he saw it as a waste of time and full of cant and monastic  
> scholarship.
>
> I note many of Larry's friends appear to be drifters like himself:  
> wayward aristocrats, fellow bohemians, local school teachers and  
> peasants.
>
> I've got this thing about Larry and peasants. I think, especially  
> after his post adolescent days as described by brother Gerald in My  
> Family and other Animals, and after the diplomatic years, he liked  
> to see himself as one: the woodcutter, the stone wall builder, the 2  
> litre of wine a day man (not uncommon in the part of France here he  
> lived), the man who hewed novels and poems out of the landscape and  
> the experience of life, the man who wore checked flanelet shirts and  
> heavy corduroys. I think he hated all that academic stuff. He liked  
> clever talk and was very well read, but well read in an untutored  
> way. He devoured libraries of books like litres of wine but he did  
> not apply the acamemic method because he did not know it for one  
> thing and probably did not want it anyway.
>
> Not convinced at all by the fake Irish thing. "Land of my fathers,  
> my fathers can have have it!" as Dylan Thomas said of Wales
>
> Larry was trying to emulate Oscar Wilde, the Irish Gentleman who  
> stood up to the English establishment. Well, old Oscar went to  
> prison and Larry went to the Mediterranean and my ancestors came to  
> the Australia for much the same reason.
>
> David
>
>
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