John Edward Courtenay Bodley

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John Edward Courtenay Bodley in 1875

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]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ E.F. Bodley & Co.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ "Balliol College Library: Jowett Papers - Appendix". Archived from the original on 10 May 2009. Retrieved 1 April 2008.
  4. ^ OSCAR WILDE Freemasons
    - Jonathan Fryer, Wilde (2004), p. 16.
  5. ^ Oscar Wilde (1987), p. 169.
  6. ^ The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler.
  7. ^ Roy Jenkins, Dilke (1965 edition), p. 147.
  8. ^ Jenkins, p. 287.
  9. ^ Jenkins, p. 355.
  10. ^ Jenkins, p. 367.
  11. ^ "CARDINAL MANNING; Mr. Bodley's Intimate Sketch of the Great Catholic Prelate". New York Times. 16 March 1913. Retrieved 9 August 2008.
  12. ^ Silvanus Phillips Thompson, The Life of Lord Kelvin (reprinted 1977), note p. 913.
  13. ^ The English People: a study of their political philosophy (1904).
  14. ^ Salutation to Five, p. 14.
  15. ^ The Englishman who has known France.
  16. ^ "Review of France by J. E. C. Bodley". The Quarterly Journal. 188: 160–182. July 1898.
  17. ^ How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Pocket Books. 1981. p. 280. ISBN 978-0-671-44530-0. Retrieved 12 July 2010.
  18. ^ Mary Soames, Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills By Winston Churchill, Clementine Churchill (1999), note p. 420.
  19. ^ Burke's Landed Gentry of Scotland

External links[edit]

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John Edward Courtenay Bodley
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