Some Leters of the Cambridge Ritualists Ackerman, Robert Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1971; 12, 1; ProQuest pg. 113

Some Letters of the Cambridge Ritualists 
Robert Ackerman 

I 
Introduction 

W HILE working in Great Britain in 1968 and 1969 on the Cam­
bridge Ritualists (or Ritual Anthropologists, or more 
simply the Cambridge Group)-Jane Ellen Harrison 

(1850-1928), Gilbert Murray (1866-1957), Francis Macdonald Cornford 
(1874-1943), and Arthur Bernard Cook (1868-1952)-1 came upon 
a small archive of unpublished letters written by and to the 
members of the group that are of interest not only to historians of 
classical scholarship but as well to those interested in the many im­
portant subjects on which these eminent scholars worked. The letters 
illustrate the remarkable way in which the Ritualists in fact did func­
tion as a group, working closely together on many of their major 
efforts, and of course they provide important biographical data on all 
concerned. 

Such data have hitherto derived mainly from three sources: obitu­
ary notices in the Proceedings of the British Academy;1 Gilbert Murray, An 
Unfinished Autobiography (London 1960), which unhappily breaks off 
before Murray came to know Miss Harrison and the others; and 
Jessie Stewart'sjane Ellen Harrison: A Portrait from Letters (London 1959 
-hereafter Stewart), which is invaluable in that it contains many 
letters that Miss Harrison wrote to Murray over the quarter century 
they worked together, but is unreliable in that it is unfortunately filled 
with errors of fact and typography. Thus the letters presented below 
will supplement these more or less public and 'official' sources with 
important and interesting new material, and will thus shed light on 
one of the more noteworthy scholarly collaborations of our century. 

This is not the place to argue the worth of the contribution made by 

1 Gilbert Murray, "Francis Macdonald Cornford, 1874-1943," ProcBritAe 29 (1943) 421-32; 
Charles Seltman, "Arthur Bernard Cook, 1868-1952," Proe BritAe 38 (1952) 295-302; J. A. K. 
Thomson, "Gilbert Murray, 1866-1957," ProcBritAc 43 (1957) 245-70. 

8--G.R.B.S. 113 



114 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

the Cambridge Group. There are some scholars who see their work as 
representing simply a blind alley-an interesting but misguided (be-, 
cause premature) attempt to apply the methods of comparative cul­
tural anthropology and comparative religion to the study of Greek 
antiquity. There are others (admittedly a smaller number) for whom 
their work represents a pioneering and, even today, suggestive and 
useful effort in this direction. Whatever their place in classical studies, 
it is plain that their work (along with that of Sir James G. Frazer) has 
had a strong influence on literary criticism in that the <myth and 
ritual' approach has been applied, with important (and controversial) 
results), to nonclassical literature and has given rise to what is known 
as <myth criticism'. I hope in the not too distant future to publish a 
general re-evaluation of their lives and work. 

So far as the letters offered here are concerned, the collection in all 
comprises ten letters and one postcard printed in full along with ex­
tracts from nine more letters. The largest and most important group 
of letters is part of an extensive unpublished correspondence between 
Cornford and Murray, of which Cornford's letters alone (with one 
important exception) are here presented. Their friendship, which be­
gan in their collaboration with Jane Harrison, endured over the whole 
of Cornford's scholarly career and terminated only with his death. 
The earliest of their letters printed here dates from 1907 and the last 
from 1942, thirty-five years later and only one year before Cornford's 
death. There are as well extracts from letters written by A. W. Ver­
rall and A. B. Cook to Cornford on the occasion of the appearance of 
the latter's first two scholarly books-Thucydides Mythistoricus (Lon­
don 1907) and From Religion to Philosophy (London 1912). In addition 
there are two communications-one a long letter, the other a post­
card-from Jane Harrison to Frances Darwin, later Mrs F. M. Corn­
ford. The letter especially, of a somewhat personal nature, amplifies 
the account of a troubled period in Miss Harrison's life that we already 
have in Stewart. Finally there are a group of extracts drawn from five 
letters written by Murray to Miss Janet Spens (1876-1963) which elu­
cidate her virtually unknown role in the elaboration of the theory of 
ritual origins of drama with which the group was so closely identified. 

Before getting to the letters themselves, it is my pleasant obligation 
to thank the many persons who have helped me: the librarians of the 
Bodleian Library for their courtesy; Professor E. R. Dodds of Oxford 
University, for his kindness in taking time out to talk with me of 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 115 

Murray; and Miss Phyllis M. Cook of Great Shelford, Cambs., Pro­
fessor Alexander Murray of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 
and Professor Christopher Cornford of the University of Cambridge 
for their generous permission to print the letters; and to Professor 
W. M. Calder III, of Columbia University, for his help in preparing this 
article and in general for introducing me to the spirit of classical 
scholarship. My especial thanks go to Professor Cornford and his fam­
ily, who gave me access to the Cornford-Murray papers and then 
permitted me to go through the entire family archive, thus enabling 
me to turn up the items by Jane Harrison. With the exception of the 
Murray-Spens correspondence, which is in the Bodleian Library (Gil­
bert Murray papers, uncatalogued), all the letters are in the posses­
sion of the Cornford family. 

II 
The Background of the Letters 

When the letters commence, with two items pertaining to Corn­
ford's first important scholarly publication, Thucydides Mythistoricus 
(London 1907), the Cambridge Group had been in existence for some 
years. It is not exactly clear when they had all come together (prob­
ably around 1900), but it is plain that the center of the Group was Miss 
Harrison, and the others came to know one another through their 
friendship with her. By early 1903 Cornford had become close enough 
to Miss Harrison to have been entrusted with proofreading her Pro­
legomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge 1903), and by 1907 
they were in the full tide of their collaboration (e.g., Thucydides 
Mythistoricus was dedicated to her). By this time he had also come to 
know Murray (he cites an unpublished lecture of the latter's in Thucyd­
ides Mythistoricus p.239), but the somewhat more formal tone of letter 
I in comparison to that of the later letters may be said to bespeak a 
certain distance between them that was but natural considering the 
difference in their ages and circumstances. (Only Miss Harrison had 
the facility for ignoring utterly such differences: see letter XIV.) Letter 
I is written from Southwold, where he had gone with Miss Harrison 
after the latter had experienced a breakdown in health.2 The refer­
ence to crowd psychology prefigures Cornford's growing interest in 
sociology, which issued in his extensive use of Durkheim and the 

2 Stewart 109. 



116 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

Annie Sociologique school in his next book, From Religion to Philosophy 
(London 1912). Concerning the reference to telepathy, it might be 
appropriate to recall that Murray was one of the many British intel­
lectuals deeply involved in psychic research around the tum of the 
century,S that he was twice President of the Society for Psychical Re­
search (in 1915-16 and 1952-53), and that he was himself a noted 'sen­
sitive' who figured in many experiments on extrasensory perception. 
(Mrs Verrall was an 'automatic writer', and one may include the 
Homerist Walter Leaf in the group.) A. B. Cook, while not so active as 
Murray, assiduously gathered reliable records of paranormal experi­
ences which he noted down in several manuscript books collectively 
labeled "ExplicandaH (now in possession of his daughter, Miss Phyllis 
Cook). 

Item II, an extract, is noteworthy as it shows that recognition for 
Cornford was immediate (although far from universal). A. W. Verrall 
(1851-1912),· although friendly with all the members of the Group 
(Miss Harrison met Murray at the Verralls), was not at all sympathetic 
to their archaeological and anthropological approach.5 It therefore 
must have heartened Cornford, who was then only an obscure Fellow 
of Trinity College, Cambridge, with an interest in the origins of philo­
sophical thought, that his decidedly unusual speculations on Thucyd­
ides should have commended themselves to Verrall. 

Items ill and IV are the sole contributions to this collection by Jane 
Harrison: both display her characteristic wit and playfulness, and the 
long letter also shows her equally characteristic seriousness and pas­
sionate nature. Although different in mood, they both date from the 
same difficult period in her life. By 1908 the mainstay of her life was, 
and had long been, what might fairly be called a passionately intel­
lectual friendship with Cornford (twenty-five years her junior); she 
had worked with him closely for more than five years. During 1908, 
however, their relationship came under severe strain as Cornford's 
regard for his future wife, Frances Darwin, deepened. Mrs Stewart 
writes: "She treated him, he told Frances long after, as if he were a 
lover who had abandoned her. 'And did it never occur to you', Frances 

3 See Alan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research (New York 1968). Obituaries of Mur­
ray as a psychic investigator by E. R. Dodds and Helen deG. Salter in the Journal of the 
Society for Psychical Research 39 (1957) 150-57. 

• See the "Memoir" of Verrall by M. A. Bayfield in A.W. Verrall, Collected Literary Essays 
Classical and Modern (Cambridge 1913) ix-di. 

6 Stewart 56-57. 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 117 

asked, 'that she might be in love with you?' 'No, never', he answered 
naively and in absolute sincerity. 'She meant a good deal to me, but 
she was old enough to be my mother'."6 In December 1908 her physi­
cal and emotional health collapsed and, as was her wont at such times, 
she took herself off to Aldeburgh to be healed by the ministrations of 
the sea. From there she wrote the deeply moving letter IV, in which 
she reconciled herself to Miss Darwin and the new order of things. 

Letters v and VI date from 1911, when Cornford's next important 
work, From Religion to Philosophy, was being written. In letter V Corn­
ford embraces Murray's invitation to lecture at Oxford as an oppor­
tunity to arrange his ideas on a reconstruction of the H conceptual 
scheme of the world which the philosophers had to start from." 
"Ridgeway" is of course Sir William Ridgeway (1853-1926), Regius 
Professor of Greek at Cambridge and the leader of those at Cambridge 
who opposed the work of the Ritualists. Formidable and even un­
scrupulous in polemic7 (seemingly his natural mode of discourse), 
Ridgeway poured contempt and ridicule on the Ritualist explanations 
of myth and especially of tragedy that the Group was developing,S 
preferring instead a euhemerist explanation for the origins of tragedy. 
Ridgeway saw tragedy arising from the funeral games held at the 
tombs ofheroes,9 which is behind the reference to "funeral games" in 
the last line in letter v. Letter VI is a deft parody of Ridgeway's tactics 
modeled on the so-called 'Fixed Forms' of the "Excursus on the Ritual 
Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy" that Murray contributed to Miss 
Harrison's Themis (Cambridge 1912). In the Excursus Murray offered 
a sketch of the Dionysian ritual scenario that he believed to be the 
formal ancestor of tragedy. See also Cornford's subsequent reference 
to Murray's 'Fixed Forms' in letter IX. 

e Stewart 112. 
7 The writer of his obituary notice, his friend and colleague R. S. Conway, writes: "In 

strict logic he was weak, especially from his way of using all kinds of evidence, strong and 
weak alike, in support of a theory of whose truth he was convinced .... " ("Sir William 
Ridgeway, 1853-1926," ProcBritAc 12 [1926] 328). In an unpublished letter to Jessie Stewart 
dated September 1901, Miss Harrison remarks: "I had a long letter from Professor Ridge­
way pointing out that the really strong points in his book [The Early Age of Greece (Cam­
bridge 1901)] were lucidity of statement, attractive presentation and a too amicable tone in 
controversy with what he elegantly and pacifically terms 'vermin'. That is all I get for my 
tactful admonitions:' 

8 For instance, Miss Harrison wrote to Murray on 16 February 1911 to report after her 
lecture "'a great to-do' between Ridgeway and ABC [Cook]." 

, See his The Origin of Tragedy (Cambridge 1910); see also Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, 
Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedyl (Cambridge 1927) 138ff, 174ff. 



118 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

In letter vn A. B. Cook gives his somewhat ambivalent reaction to 

Cornford's just-published From Religion to Philosophy. Although Cook 
was "perhaps the most erudite and fertile of [Miss Harrison's] help­
ers,"lO and although he worked closely with the other members of 
the Group as well, there can be little doubt that he was the most con­
servative of them all and in fact never agreed with them on several 
important points. For example, in an unpublished letter to Murray 
(in the Bodleian Library, Gilbert Murray Papers, uncatalogued) dated 
23 August 1913, Cook expresses his disapproval of the key Ritualist 
phrase coined by Miss Harrison, Ceniautos daimon': " ... but I daresay 
it is all a question of words. I hate C daemons' of all sorts, and cyear-
daemons' worse than any." See also Themis 2, pA9 (,Note to pA8"), 
where Miss Harrison refers to Cook's rejection in the second volume of 
his Zeus (Cambridge 1925) of the basic Durkheimian notion of the god 
as the projection of the worshipping community. 

Letter VIII was written by Cornford to Murray on the occasion of the 
publication of From Religion to Philosophy. In letter IX Cornford re­
quests permission to dedicate The Origin of Attic Comedy (London 1914) 
to Murray. In it he also expresses in diagrammatic form his ideas con­
cerning the probable genetic relationship between comedy and tra­
gedy. Letters x and XI offer the only instance where both sides of an 
exchange between Murray and Cornford are available. In x Murray 
offers his first enthusiastic reaction to The Origin of Attic Comedy, which 
is valuable both in itself and because (contrary to Cornford's wish, ex­
pressed in letter IX) Murray seems not to have reviewed the book. It 
might be noted that Murray's delight with the book was shared by 
few besides the reviewer for the Saturday Review, for most of the other 
notices were negative, despite Cornford's early optimism.n Both 
Cornford and Murray refer in their letters to the important contribu­
tion to the ritual theory of tragedy made by Miss Janet Spens, which 
is explained in section XII. 

Letter XIII offers Cornford's interesting ideas on the relation be­
tween the practice of excommunication and the figure of the scape­
goat on the one hand and the striking regularity of the period of exile 
in Greek myth on the other. Cornford adduces a number of instances 

10 Stewart 102. 
11 For the Saturday Review notice, see infra n.39; some other reviews, all negative, were: 

TLS, 14 May 1914; Cambridge Review (by J. T. Sheppard), 3 June 1914; Athenaeum, 6 June 
1915; Nation (New York), 2 November 1915. 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 119 

to show that this period is eight years (€VVCf.fi:'TTJptc or the <Great Year'), 
which in turn he connects with the eschatology of the mystery religions. 
This letter offers a sketch of what became sections 121-24 (pp.23G-40) 
of From Religion to Philosophy. Letter XIV was written shortly after Miss 
Harrison's death in 1928. Her friends endowed an annual Jane Harri­
son Memorial Lecture, and Murray was the natural choice to give the 
inaugural address. 

The last letter, xv, comes from 1942, only a year before Cornford's 
death. In it he evinces a revival of his older interests in myth, ritual, 
and the origins of Greek philosophical thought that had more or less 
been dormant during the twenties and thirties, during which time he 
had produced the work on Plato for which he is best known. But there 
can be no doubt that his posthumous work, Principium Sapientiae, 
edited by W. K. C. Guthrie (Cambridge 1952), along with several 
essays (e.g., HA Ritual Basis for Hesiod's Theogony") included in his 
posthumous The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays, likewise edited 
by Professor Guthrie (Cambridge 1950), shows clearly that Cornford 
had returned at the end of his life to the questions that may fairly be 
said to have occupied him always. Professor Guthrie, in his Intro­
ductory Memoir to The Unwritten Philosophy (p.viii), quotes Cornford 
as having said Hin his later years that it sometimes seemed to him as 
if he had been all his life writing one and the same book." Professor 
Guthrie specifies the theme of that book by quoting the following 
words from Cornford's inaugural lecture of 1931: "If we look beneath 
the surface of philosophic discussion, we find its course is largely 
governed by assumptions that are seldom, or never, mentioned. I 
mean the groundwork of current conceptions shared by all men of 
any given culture and never mentioned because it is taken for granted 
as obvious." Certainly letter xv is another bit of evidence to suppOrt 
this impression of overall unity that is discernible in Cornford's noble 
scholarly career.12 

12 A note on the editorial practices employed. The letters have generally been presented 
in chronological order except in the cases of the extracts from the Verrall letter and the 
Murray-Spens letters, where clarity is better served by slightly departing from strict 
chronology. The letters have been transcribed literally (that is, as literally as possible-the 
vagaries of Miss Harrison's handwriting do not always permit absolute assurance on this 
matter). Abbreviations have not been expanded: '&:' indicates the Tironian sign for 'and'. 
So far as the extracts are concerned, ellipses indicate brief personal remarks that have been 
excised on grounds of irrelevance. 



120 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

III 
The Letters 

I F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

Dear Murray, 

5 North Parade 
Southwold 
June 18 1907 

It was good of you to send me the review,13 which I had been 
anxious to see, It has made me feel proud & humble at the same time, 
as praise does, from a judgment one values. I never expected that you 
and JEH and A W'[l4 would all say nice things, but you all have. 

Your point about a people pursuing a policy without knowing it is 
one which I have thought about often (with little result-as you point 
out !). I suppose I inclined, when I was writing that stuff, to the view 
that in such cases the real moving force is the quite conscious will of a 
few individuals, who somehow manage to carry the rest with them. 
But the other alternative-of a collective psychology in a crowd­
may be the truer. If only we knew a little more about telepathy. 

Miss Harrison is alarmingly nervous sometimes, but I think the sea 
air is beginning to do her good. Weare staying on here till June 27 
and coming back for July 8-29, probably. 

I am getting stronger, rather slowly. The weather has kept me back. 
Yours vy sincerely, 
FMCornford 

II EXTRACT, A. W. VERRALL TO F. M. CORNFORD, 5 MARCH 1907 
On the main proposition of your first part, I think you clearly make 

out that the <Western Policy' was entertained at Athens and affected 
Athenian policy much earlier than a reader of Thucydides would per­
ceive ... Now for the second part, which is more in my way of busi­
ness. First, I cordially welcome your demolition of the exaggerated 
view, that Thucydides had fully developed [ ?] what we call the scientif­
ic view of human life and history ... Second, I think you are right in 
making more definite the <tragic' element in his conceptions. 

18 Sc. of Thucydides Mythistoricus: Murray's review appeared as "History and Tragedy" in 
The Albany Review, N.S. I (1907) 467-70. 

11 As indicated by the extract from the letter of Verrall infra. 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 121 

III POSTCARD, J. E. HARRISON TO FRANCES DARWIN, 14 NOVEMBER 1908 

We seem to play at Box & COX.15 I amjust off to Oxford till Thursday 
or Friday next week. I am taking my Darwinian paper16 with me for 
M r Murray to put in the Xianity which at present is rather to seek. I 
do hope you got picked up in Surrey & have come back ramping like 
a young lion. 

Yrs, 
JEH 

Whenever M r Murray looks over a paper of mine he always says at the 
end, 'This is quite admirable, every word of it', then sits down & 
softly re-writes it all! The Bacchae was entirely me. 

IV J. E. HARRISON TO FRANCES DARWIN 

2 Grosvenor Place 
Aldeburgh 
Sunday 
[December 1908 or early 1909]17 

[Inserted in Miss Harrison's hand atop page one] 
I wrote this last night & now I find there is no Sunday post out. 

My dear F, 
About names-how strange & wonderful they are. I think one will 

always-in the New Jerusalem-have official names for public use & 
one's secret names for those who are near to one, known only to a very 
few. r cLywvTa OV6/LaTa')18_a secret name should mean only just one's 
personal relation that no one else could have and the public name is 
just a label which you have in common with a [illegible]. 'Francis' will 
do quite well as a label for Francis-Comusl9 cannot go on & 'Frank' 

15 Box and Cox was a one-act farce by J. Morton (1847), the plot of which centers on the 
rental of the same room by two men. Hence, a Box and Cox arrangement is one by which 
two persons alternate. It is also the title of a curtain-raiser by Gilbert and Sullivan. 

16 "The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religions," in Darwin and Modern Science 
(Cambridge 1909), the volume edited by A. C. Seward issued to commemorate the centen­
ary of Darwin's birth. 

17 Stewart 111-12, 128, places Miss Harrison in Aldeburgh in the second half of December 
1908; she recuperated there until July 1909. 

18 Eur. Phaeth. 226 Diggle. 
19 Cornford was known as 'Comus' because he took the title role in a production of the 

masque presented as part of the Milton Tercentenary celebrations in 1908. For a fuller ac­
count see Stewart 107-09, and Christopher Hassall's biography, Rupert Brooke (New York 
1964) 157-66. 

9-G.R.B.S. 



122 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

I always flatly declined to call him. I don't like the name in itself & all 
its associations for me are round yr father2°-tho it expresses him as 
little as it expresses 'Francis'. In time I daresay I shall get used to say­
ing the label name, & he had better label me in the family 'Jane' tho 
he has never called me that in his life. Long ago as I daresay he has 
told you he announced by letter (he always announces everything by 
letter)21 that he meant always to call me Shvah, wch is Hebrew for the 
Queen ofSheba.22 It was because ... but you know yr Bible. So then I 
fell into calling him Shlomoh (accent on the last syllable) which is 
Hebrew for Solomon. So if you want to understand our signatures you 
will have to learn one Hebrew letter tz;!-he is very wise. Long before 
that when we were in Greece together23 he got called the Bear24-1 
will show you some-day the photograph that will explain why he was 
called that-& then Shlomoh became the name of the her ?]-Bear be­
cause it is soft & padding & fumbles and shuffles-but these names 
& great truths are known only to me & him & you. 

I think you & I have felt about for names for each other & never 
found them. Frances doesn't somehow mean much to me. I think that 
is why I shorten it to F. But it means a remembrance as it was a great 
deal to yr mother. I shall perhaps some day find the right beast for 
you but it certainly isn't a bear. You haven't a scrap of one in you, wch 
is odd because yr father has. 

Jane is a dignified label for me-but I want you to drop 'Aunt'.25 

'0 Frances Darwin's father was Sir Francis ('Frank') Darwin (1848-1925), third son of the 
eminent naturalist, and her mother was Miss Harrison's close friend Ellen Crofts (1856-

1903). Miss Crofts is referred to again below as Miss Harrison's "friend whom I chose for 
myself." See Stewart 103-{)4, and Gwen Raverat, Period Piece (London 1952) 193-94. Another 
valuable source for information on 'classical' Cambridge in the late nineteenth century is 
the life and letters of Lady Jebb, With Dearest Love to All (Chicago 1960), by Mary Reed 
Bobbitt. 

21 For instance, he asked Miss Darwin to marry him by letter-Stewart 109. 
22 Nearly ten years earlier Professor of Hebrew the Rev. R. H. Kennett (1864-1932) had 

been prevailed upon to give a course in Hebrew to a select class: viz:., Miss Harrison, Corn­
ford, Cook and J. G. Frazer. 

23 The trip is nearly certainly the one Cornford and Miss Harrison made in 1904-{)5 to the 
eastern Mediterranean, which included attendance in Athens at the Congress of the History 
of Religions in 1905, as well as a stop in Crete on their return voyage during which Miss 
Harrison saw the inscription later called "The Hymn to the Kouretes," which had then just 
been unearthed by R. C. Bosanquet and which Miss Harrison was to make much of in 
Themis. 

24 Miss Harrison had a passion for everything ursine, and 'bear' and 'bearish' figure promi­
nently as terms of high praise in the letters printed in Stewart. 

26 Cornford and Miss Darwin regularly referred to her as 'Aunt Jane': Stewart 109-10. 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 123 

Aunt & Uncle have to me always a touch of comedy & even farce 
about them-perhaps you won't agree. You know not what being a 
real Aunt is. I don't think it is much of a relationship anyhow, I mean, 
I find that with my real nieces, I have to make separate friends with 
them individually or not if I am to have any real relation. Anyhow I 
am not yr real Aunt-& you are not my real niece-you are first & 

foremost the child of my friend whom I chose for myself & who is 
gone & that is more than any unchosen relationship & you are my 
friend for yr own sake-so let our label be Jane. One cannot always 
find a real name-it either comes or doesn't come & it is useless to 
hunt. I think very often just as the Greeks had Augenblicksgotter26 

who developed into permanent gods so the real names are flashes of 
sudden intimacy & contact, caught in a moment & then kept for 
always. 

It is horrible cold blooded work labelling one's jampots. I think that 
is why to me marriage has in it so much that is noisome. It brings 
about all sorts of official states & relations. Francis becomes suddenly 
'Aunt-Maud's'27 nephew & has to be rechristened & so on. By the by 
I suddenly warmed in my heart to Aunt Maud about a week ago. I 

saw that Gwen28 was beautiful & that yet she was like her mother­
the glow of Gwen's inward fire had burnt up all the physical common­
ness. & tho' the likeness was there it was a new creature. 

About work. Yes the world is a ruthless place & sex the most ruth­
less thing in it. Thank you for seeing that. I am just now faced by the 
blank unalterable fact that for more than 6 months Francis has not 
cared & could not care at all for the work that has been for years our 
joint life & friendship-but I have faith to believe it may not always 
be so. While it is so it is better that he & I should not be together. I 
also absolutely believe that you reverence work-tho' you could as 
yet not understand nor can he how-late in life-work & friendship 
come to be the whole of life. I trust you always. 

Jane. 

28 The term for a 'primitive' stage in the process of the 'formation' of a god, introduced 
by Hermann Usener, Gotternamen: Versuch einer Lehre von der religiosen Begriffsbildung3 

(Frankfurt/Main 1948) 279fI (ed.1 1896). 
27 Mrs Maud DuPuy Darwin, Frances' aunt and mother of her cousin and close friend 

Gwen. See infra n.28. 
28 Gwen Darwin, later Mrs Jacques Raverat, whose informative and delightful memoir 

Period Piece has already been cited (supra n.20). 



124 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

I think yr beast-name for Francis is really yr own name. You always 
seem to be crouching mentally waiting to give a splendid spring 
straight to the mark. That is why my dear one when I am weak tho 
you often delight me you never rest me. Someday I shall be stronger. 

v F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

Dear Murray, 

Conduit Head 
Madingley Road 
Cambridge 
Feb 17 1911 

You do me great honour when you ask me to lecture at Oxford. I 
would have answered immediately, but I had to consult Miss Harri­
son who had a sort of lien on my Easter vacation. She says I may ac­
cept; and I do so gladly. 

With characteristic wiliness you have hit on a subject which is near 
my heart. I have some nebulous ideas which I shall be glad to formu­
iate, if I can. You saw, I think, some rough notes of mine. 

What to call the thing I don't quite know. It would be an attempt 
to reconstruct the (so to say) conceptual scheme of the world which 
the philosophers had to start from. <The background of Early Gk. 
Philosophy' ? Does that convey the meaning? (Behind the scenes of 
hylozoism' sounds flashy & scandalous). 

Thank you for thinking of me. It makes me all puffed up. 
And it will be a pleasure to stay with you a night. 
We are having fun with Ridgeway, who will celebrate my funeral 

games next Thursday. 

VI F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

Dear Murray, 

Yours vy sincerely, 
FMCornford 

Conduit Head 
Madingley Road 
Cambridge 
Nov 291911 

Thank you for your splendid entertainment. There is not the small­
est doubt about it. 

This is to point out the striking confirmation supplied by stereo-



ROBERT ACKERMAN 125 

typed ritual form observed in Ridgeway's speeches supporting votes 
of thanks: 

(1) Paean (with cloak), short & leading quickly to 
(2) Complete Peripeteia, or change of emotion, from gratitude to 

something easily distinguishable. 
(3) Protracted Agon with a man of straw (degenerate Korn-dae­

mon)29 ending in 
(4) cTrapa:Yfl-oc of the creature (in the most instructive cases, doubtful 

which antagonist has torn the other to pieces: no certainty in general 
confusion). 

(5) Epiphany of hero from tomb, followed by 
(6) Joyful outcry about grand old facts of human nature (such as 

head-punching), usually combined with 
(7) Tr&(Joc av&yy€AOV, personal reminiscence of a.ywV€C & cTrapaYfl-0t 

among wild tribes of western seas.30 

(8) Second peripeteia with faded (sadly faded) avayvwptctc of the merits 
of the Korndaemon, but no attempt to put pieces together, because 
they cannot ever be found, being of negligible size. 

(9) Final paean on grand old facts etc. 
(10) Apotheosis of the hero. 

Yours, 
FMCornford 

VII EXTRACT, A. B. COOK TO F. M. CORNFORD, 12 MAY 1912 (on reading 
From Religion to Philosophy) 

After saying that HI do not know of any book which in recent years 
has given me more acute mental enjoyment ... ," Cook continues: 
"Our viewpoints, I suspect, are different. But for pages together you 
carry me along with you, and through regions of absorbing interest. 
I had always taken kindly to the pre-Socratics; but you invest them 
with a new atmosphere, through which a whole vista of pre-pre­
Socraticism can be seen-their 'views' become views indeed." 

28 'Korndamon' (i.e., the spirit supposed to be indwelling in the grain) was a term that 
had become familiar in anthropological·classical discourse largely as a result of J. G. Frazer, 
who in turn got it from the German ethnographer Wilhelm Mannhardt. 

30 'The wild tribes of the western seas' are doubtless the Irish; Professor Ridgeway was of 
Irish descent. 



126 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

VIII F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

Dear Murray. 

Conduit Head 
Madingley Road 
Cambridge 
June 3 1912 

As I noted with pain that you did not quote long extracts from my 
later work, I am having a copy sent to you.3! 

Apart from this defeat, your lecture gave me very keen enjoyment 
& some ideas which I hope to reproduce as my own when I lecture 
next term on Greek tragedy. I wish I could have seen you both other­
wise 8( because I want tips for this course. Can you tell me of any 
books which are really useful? 

I enclose an extract from an examination paper to show that there 
is still virgin soil for your good seed. 

If ever I write a tragedy, I shall have a pfjetC by the Master of Trin­
ity32 after each act. He alone has the power of lifting us to the higher 
plane. Wasn't he too sweet-as I suppose you wd say, now that you are 
Americanized.3s 

I was very sorry not to see Lady Mary: but I had a Marlowe Society 
meeting34 which I could not possibly cut. 

I really did enjoy your lecture immensely. I am still startled by 
€V8aLf.LOvta, but my slowmoving 8( conservative mind may perhaps 
come round. 

Yours ever sincerely, 
FMCornford 

31 From Religion to Philosophy, which had just been published. 
as Dr H. Montagu Butler (1833-1918). 

33 'Americanized' because Murray had gone to the United States to deliver the Lane Lec­
tures at Harvard in 1907 (which became The Rise of the Greek Epicl ), and then again in 1912 
he had lectured at Columbia (these lectures became Four [later Five] Stages in Greek Religion). 

34 Lady Mary, of course, was the wife of Gilbert Murray. Cornford had remained active 
in student dramatic activities ever since the production of Comus in 1908 that gave him his 
short-lived nickname; he was the treasurer and faculty adviser to the Marlowe Society, the 
student dramatic organization: see Stewart 108. 



ROBHRT ACKHRMAN 

IX F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

Dear Murray, 

127 

Conduit Head 
Madingley Road 
Cambridge 
Feb 16 1914 

I am passing for press the first sheet of (The Origin of Attic 
Comedy'. Before I do so, I want leave to dedicate the book to yourself. 
It owes much to you, & is indeed a descendant of your Fixed Forms.3s 
If you are not tired of being a dedicatee, it would be a great pleasure 
to me to have your name on a page by itself. 

I hasten to add that it is not blasphemous within the meaning etc. 
and the percentage of obscenity is as low as decency requires in 
learned works. 

I am very eager to know what you will think of it all, & I hope the 
dedication won't prevent you from reviewing it. It ought to be out 
before Easter. Nearly everyone will think it quite fantastic, and only a 
few who read it all through will be convinced. YetI think it must be true. 

It seems to me that tragedy will turn out like this: 

Agon 

Comedy 

death & resurrection 
(rudiment in Comedy. 

emphd in Tragedy) 

marriage 
Komos 

(emphd in Comedy.) 

Aesch. Trilogy with happy ending Satyrplay 
= fertility-marriage 

squeezed out 
into appendix 

The original satyrplay theme was the Marriage. Aeschylus deliber­
ately extruded this fertility element out of the tragic part & left it in 
the appendix, inventing the tetralogy. No satyrplays before him, be­
cause Thespian tragedy was still caTVPLKOV & contained its own satyric 
element. Its -DeEOL, LEPELC, etc. being all but satyrs-the natural chorus 
of the Daemon mystery, only slightly varied. But this is a long story. 

Yours, 
FMCornford 

35 As noted supra (p.1l7), a reference to Murray's 'Fixed Forms' discussed in his Excursus 
in Themis. In the preface (p.vii) to The Origin of Attic Comedy, Cornford straightforwardly 
says that his thesis-that Old Comedy was derived from some preexistent ritual dramatic 
performance-was directly suggested by Murray's Excursus. 



128 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

X EXTRACTS, G. MURRAY TO F. M. CORNFORD, 28 MARCH 1914 
My dear Cornford, 

That is a thundering good book and I am most proud to be asso­
ciated with it. It raises so many lines of thought that I cannot write 
very coherently about it, but I will make such r-:emarks as come into 
my head. 

First, I think that the Ritual Origin of Comedy may be taken as 
proved. I suspect that your unfavourable critics will mostly begin by 
saying that no one ever doubted it and that, if they have not said it 
themselves, that was only because it was not worth mentioning. Also, 
the particular ritual must lie within the limits you have drawn. I sus­
pect that in time we shall be able to specify it rather more closely ... 
The explanation of the Para basis was new to me and seems convinc­
ing, also the sacrifice and nut-throwing. The Alazon is most interest­
ing, and your identification of him with the hero who commits hubris 
in tragedy-or rather the Alazoneia= Comic Hubris-is profoundly 
illuminating. In this connection you use the Pharmakos all right, but 
what about the Bomolochos ? The word is always puzzling. Does it not 
originate in Comedy, to describe a stock character who lies in wait for, 
or licks, the Altar in the sacrifice scene? ... 

About the Stock Masks I think you must be right yet I am not satis­
fied in detail. I feel here some forcing of the facts to suit the formula­
but only here in the whole book ... 

Sections 96ff are awfully good, about Plot and Character in Tragedy 
and Comedy respectively ... About the ritual, I agree that it is mainly 
a difference of emphasis that produces Tragedy and Comedy; but I 
cannot help suspecting that the difference had already produced itself 
in the rites before they developed into entertainments. We know 
there were Mourning Rites-Adonis, Thammuz, Osiris, Dionysus­
and I do not see why we should assume that they were late in origin. 
The Pathea of Dionysus are in Hdt.36 Thus you would get, in the rites 
themselves, a differentiation which tended normally to Tragedy and 
Comedy, without leaving so very much for the individual initiative of 
Thespis or Aeschylus. 

Did Miss Harrison tell you about Miss Spens's papers on the Phar­
makos in Tragedy? I think she gets in a very important point that I 
have overlooked ... 37 [Here follows a short list of minor errata.] 

88 See Hdt. 5.67. 
87 See the extracts from Murray's letters to Miss Spens, section xu infra. 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 

XI F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

Dear Murray, 

129 

Monastery Farm 
East Lulworth 
Dorset 
April 1 1914 

Your letter, which took some time to reach me in this monastic re­
treat-a real monastery with a cemetery in the back garden-gave 
me great pleasure. With you and Cook as Aaron & Hur,38 I can face 
the Moabites. The first flight of reviews [Sc. of The Origin of Attic 
Comedy] are favourable, especially the Saturday,39 who is intelligent & 
kind. 

The Anodos may be, as you say, more integral than I have repre­
sented it. Cook has worked at this in Zeus-especially pointing out 
that one Anodos vase has Gaia in a bridal veil, with an Eros above­
showing that she does rise for her Gamos.40 

I am glad you like the Parabasis part. It is a longish shot, but really 
seemed the only solution consistent with the position of the Parab. 
after the Agon. 

I was doubtful about {3WfJ-oA6xoc. It doesn't seem to be a technical word 
in Comedy itself whereas Alazon has some claim to be so regarded. 
If it meant the altar-licker in Comedy, it ought to denote the Alazon; 
but it doesn't. It seems rather applicable to the hero-Eiron. But the 
word does look ritual somehow. Only I couldn't see how. 

The Stock masks I have overemphasized, I suppose, because they 
are neglected. I feel that, though I may not have allowed enough for 
the individual traits which come in with the historic names, (Euri­
pides especially), the characters are not individuals transferred on to 
the stage, but conventionalized to some preconceived pattern. Have 

38 Hur, with Aaron, held up Moses' hands in the struggle against the Amalekites: Exodus 
17:10,12; 24:14. 

39 [Anonymous], "Comedy Begins," Saturday Review 117 (28 March 1914), 404-05. See 
supra n.ll. 

40 No illustration in vol. I of Zeus exactly fits Cornford's description. Since he was in close 
contact with Cook as the latter was writing Zeus, he might well have seen a picture of a vase 
that Cook at the last moment decided not to include. See for similar vases: J. E. Harrison, 
Prolegomena2 (Cambridge 1907) figs. 71 and 173. Dr D. von Bothmer confirms this per litt. (18 

December 1970): "In this I must disappoint you, for I have no representation that would 
accurately describe the vase Cornford had in mind." 



130 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

you read Siiss, De personarum Atticae comoediae orig. et usu 141 He goes 
quite as far: indeed I followed him, with some qualms, but fortified 
by the reflection that he was not grinding my axe but a quite different 
one of his own. Socrates does in a way kill & resurrect Strepsiades; and 
Euripides at least closes [?] Tragedy. But <Doctor' is of course too nar­
row a term for the medicine-man-Sophist. 

Cook gave me the point about portraits in art. He was strongly in­
clined to condemn individual masks in V. cent as impossible fro point 
of view of general development of art. And I don't believe they could 
have gone back to conventional masks in realistic New Comedy, if 
they had had individual masks in much more conventional Old 
Comedy. 

I am very glad you like the last chapter which is a bit of what I have 
to say on the general subject of ancient drama. 

I am quite ready to believe in a difference in the rites behind Trag. 
and Com. in the religious stage. My notion was that <tragedy' at some 
time had been quite serious & quite probably predominantly sad, 
like the Adonis rites, as you say; but had somehow become degener­
ate & tended to satyric buffoonery as apparently always happens. I 
still cling to the idea (not mentioned in this book) that the Orphic 
movement from Epimenides to Peisistratus had some share in making 
tragedy serious again-some mystical reinterpretation & expurga­
tion making the old daimon's death a serious thing once more. I hope 
to get clearer about this & to sort out the heroic element too, with 
W. Leaf's stuff to help.42 

I did hear from JEH something of Miss Spens' Pharmakos, which 
struck me as original & important. Indeed I shoved in a good deal 
more about the Pharmakos in consequence. We have neglected the 
apotropaic side in emphasising the fertility aspect; though both are so 
marked in Comedy-apotropaic in t/16yoc and fertility in the sex ele­
ment. I suppose Death is a riddance and atonement, not a mere 
prelude to resurrection,-more than we have allowed for.43 

Thank you too for minor errata. What silly mistakes one does 
make. 

41 Wilhelm Siiss, De personarum antiqUiU! comoediae Atticae usu atque origine (Bonn 1905). 
For W. Suss see now: A. Thierfelder. Gnomon 42 (1970) 638-40. 

42 Probably referring to the historical research of Walter Leaf (1852-1927) in Homer and 
History (London 1915) and other books. 

43 See the extracts from Murray's letters to Miss Spens, section xu infra. 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 131 

It is hard to keep one's mind off politics. They never were so excit­
ing. I hope this Army versus the People business will die down. Don't 
you think it would be a very risky cry for our side to take up? My 
hope is that Asquith going to the War Office will put an end to it.44 

Do people always say such utterly insane things at moments of ex­
citement as one reads daily in the Times correspondence? I don't 
seem to remember any such outbursts of lunacy. 

Thank you again for your kind words. I hope the reverberation of 
my book will turn into new things in your head, & better ones, as 
generally happens. 

Yours ever sincerely, 
FMCornford 

XII EXTRACTS, G. MURRAY TO JANET SPENS, DECEMBER 1913-JUNE 1914 
In 1913 Murray led a seminar on Euripides for advanced students. 

Among them was Professor E. R. Dodds, who told me (in 1969) that 
most of the meetings were taken up by rather rarefied colloquies be­
tween Murray and one of the students, Miss Janet Spens45 (1876-
1963; later Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and a distinguished scholar 
on the poetry of Edmund Spenser). Miss Spens even then seemed to 
know a good deal about the ritual origins of drama and had views of 
her own on the subject. Out of the work of this course Miss Spens 
wrote a long paper that eventually became An Essay on Shakespeare's 
Relation to Tradition (Oxford 1916). That book does not directly con­
cern us here, but among its main points was Miss Spens's most import­
ant and original contribution to the theory of ritual origins for 
tragedy-that the ritual of the dying and rising god had to be supple­
mented by the ritual of the scapegoat, or cpapfLaKOC, in order to account 
for certain persisting themes and characters in tragedy. Such is the 
background for the following extracts from a series of letters from 
Murray to Miss Spens (the originals are to be found in the Bodleian 
Library, Murray correspondence, uncatalogued). 

The exchange begins (29 December 1913) with Murray's comment 
on a draft version of what was to become An Essay: "Your second 
point, that Tragedy is essentially a ceremony of Katharmos or Kathar­
sis is, I think, true and profoundly important." On 17 April 1914, 

44 A reference to the severe domestic political crisis that had arisen over Northern Ireland 
in 1914; it was resolved only by the outbreak of the First World War. 

46 An obituary of Miss Spens is to be found in the (London) Times, 6 January 1963. 



132 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

Murray writes: "By the way, I have just been re-shaping a syllabus on 
the Religious Background of the Bacchae and found that the argu­
ment did not go satisfactorily. On working it over I found that it was­
I think-because I had left out the Pharmakos from my scheme of 
tragedy. Just your point. I will think over Orestes as an outcast." 

Only three weeks earlier he had written (28 March 1914): HI am 
sending you a copy of Comford's new book on Comedy. I think in 
general it strengthens your case considerably, as showing the influ­
ence of the Mummers' Play on literary drama ... 46 The Pharmakos 
turns up in Comedy as an Alazon, or Boaster apparently, at any rate 
as an unwelcome intruder, and has to be driven out." And the next 
day, 29 March 1914, he wrote: HI have just been invited by the British 
Academy to give its annual Shakespeare lecture this summer ... It 
occurred to me that I might lecture on your sort of line, calling atten­
tion to your book.47 I would chiefly run the Orestes-Hamlet business, 
and the effect of the Year Ritual on Drama as well as Religion." 

Finally, Murray wrote to Miss Spens on 25 June 1914, two days after 
he had delivered the Shakespeare lecture: "By the way, I think the 
difference between Tragedy and Comedy is probably merely this: 
that Tragedy comes from a regular Trauerspiel, a Ritual Lamentation 
like the Adonis rite, and Comedy from almost anything else. The 
other things tend to be made comic or at least cheerful. And, I incline 
to think, even your Pharmakos can be made into a joke, if people 
want to do so. Like the kicking out of the Alazon in Cornford; or even 
the Guy Fawkes procession or the sawing in two of Judas.-What do 
you think? I should be sorry to upset your nice apple-cart, but it 
looks to me as if the Pharmakos was not in itself the special cause of 
Tragedy." 

48 See Roger J. E. Tiddy, The Mummers' Play (Oxford 1923). The publication date notwith­
standing, the lectures that make up the book were in fact given in the School of English 
Literature in Oxford in the spring of 1914. 

47 At the start of his lecture CHamlet and Orestes," ProcBritAc 6 [1913-14] 389), Murray 
mentions the recent" course of lectures given at Oxford by Miss Janet Spens of Lady Mar­
garet Hall on The Scapegoat in Tragedy, which I hope to see published next year." The refer­
ence was of course dropped when Murray incorporated the lecture into The Classical Tradi­
tion in Poetry (Cambridge [Mass.] 1927). 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 

XIII F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

Dear Murray, 

133 

Cambridge 
May 111914 

You are interested in Heaven & Hell, which I hear you connect with 
mystery religions. One or two things have struck me about this. 

Mystery religions emphasise union & solidarity (1) of the com­
munion of saints in the secrety society (2) of Man with God. The pen­
alty of sin is excommunication-sin, a breach in solidarity (like blood­
shed of animals, who are solid with society at first). 

Excommunication exists in a primitive state of society (as Glotz 
shows, SoUdarite de la famille, chap. vi)48 as a means of escaping collective 
responsibility of the whole clan. The clan expels its offending mem­
ber, abandons him as outlaw to the avenger (l'abandon noxal). The 
mildest form is 'penal servitude' to the injured party, or to someone 
else. Apollo has to serve Admetus for killing Cyclopes; Heracles 
serves with Omphale, till he is ayv6c, Trachin. 258 etc.). The interest­
ing thing is that the period of such servitude is a year or a Great Year 
(&7T€vtavTLc/L6c). Heracles serves Omphale for 3 years (trieteris ?). Plato, 
Laws 868B Tpt€T€LC a7T€VtaVT~c€tc for murderer. Cadmus serves Ares 
for a£owc JvtavT6c= 8 years= ennaeteris.49 Apollo & Poseidon have to 

87]T€VE/L€V €lc €vtavT6v to Laomedon.50 Apollo for murder of Python 
is exiled for ennaeteris. Man who ate human flesh at Lycaean sacrifice 
becomes wolf for 9 years. So in Hesiod Theog. 51 the oathbreaking god 
is exiled from the Gods for nine years & in the tenth mixes again with 
them. All the instances seem to be 1 year or trieteris or ennaeteris.52 

This links with Empedocles, whose daemons are exiled for oath­
breaking & bloodshed, and are cpvy&.8€c 8€68€v Kat &A7]Tat (outlaws, 
vagabonds). 

Here we are in the cycle of 7TaAtYY€V€C£a which is thus an a7T€vtavTtc/L6c. 

Cf. Pind. at ii 75, DCOt h6A/LaCaV JCTp£c53 etc. = 'trieteric' a7T€VtaVTtc-

/L6c of Soul. 
The a7T€vtavTtc/L6c for a Great Year seems to come into mystery 

48 Gustave GIotz, La solidarite de la famille dans Ie droit criminel en Grece (Paris 1904). 
49 ApoUod. 3.4.2. 
50 II. 21.444. 
51 Theog. 793-804. 

52 This sentence is written in the left margin. 
63 In fact, O/. 2.68, oco, ~. ET6t..p.acav ECTplc. 



134 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

doctrine for social custom, with the idea of exile from communion with 
God, as worst penalty for sin. 

I suspect that Empedocles' 30,000 ciJpaL is to be taken literally. It 
would work out thus, if we take it to be the complete world period:-
30,000 seasons= 10,000 years= lOx 1000 years. The 10th thousand­
years= the Reign of Love, when all souls are restored to communion 
& unity in God (Sphere). The other 9 are the years of exile, as in 
Hesiod. Put them in a circle: 

G Reign of Love= Heaven: soul discarnate 

9 1 the 4 elements. Soul spends 1000 years= 
8 2 

7 3 } 10 lives of 100 years (cf. Phaedrus) 

6 4 in each of the 4 elements 

0 Reign of Neikos= Hell: soul shut out in 

darkness & discarnate 

Anyhow, the Great Year notion seems to be bound up with that of 
exile and C abandon noxa1' -that is a new point to me. It suits the prom­
inence of the Great Year in mystical systems. 

Heracleitus (10800 years= 360x 30 years. 30 years <the time it takes 
to become a grandfather' = cycle of human life-a day in the Great 
Year) 

Euriped. [sic] & Orphics 
Plato. 
I suppose the EVLaV7'OC (even if not derived from EVL-a~-'Tc'i»54 is essen-

tially the time when things come back to their starting point (annus­
annulus). If you start from God, you return to him in an EVLaV'TOc. 

Yours, 
FMCornford 

64 This etymology had been offered by Miss Harrison citing Prellwitz, in Themis (Cam­
bridge 1912) 183 n.6. In fact, Prellwitz, Etymologisches Worterbuch1 (Gottingen 1892) gives lvi 
+41TOC?, while Prellwitz2 (1905) gives lv'+aVrq>. 



ROBERT ACKERMAN 

XIV F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

My dear Murray, 

135 

Conduit Head 
Madingley Road 
Cambridge 
Oct 5 1928 

I have very little but admiration for your lecture on J.E.H.55 You 
have managed to say so many of the right things, & said them so well. 
I read it aloud to Frances. She stuck at only 2 things: (1) the opening 
sentence struck her as rather queer & abrupt for those not on familiar 
terms with Year Spirits.56 But your audience will be on familiar terms 
-I don't think this matters. (2) p. 21 line 3 lack of selfconsciousness.57 

Is this the right word? I know what you mean; but wasn't it that she 
never felt the difference in age as relevant & so it didn't come into 
her mind? I often thought she treated me (25 years her junior) as if I 
were older than herself & made me feel she was the younger of the 
two. This was very remarkable & I am glad you have stressed it. 

I think it is a splendid lecture & I have no criticisms. 

xv F. M. CORNFORD TO G. MURRAY 

My dear Murray, 

Yours ever, 
FMCornford 

Conduit Head 
Madingley Road 
Cambridge 
27 Aug. [1942]58 

I am most grateful to you for being willing to act as rhapsode for 
me, and delighted that my stuff appeals to you. I am doing it all out 
at length with much more evidence in the book I am trying to write.59 

55 This was Murray's inaugural Jane Ellen Harrison Memorial Lecture,Jane Ellen Harri­
son: An Address (Cambridge 1928), delivered at Newnham College on 27 October 1928. 

56 Murray's lecture opens: '''The Year Spirit, born young again every spring, has entered 
into your soul, and taught us all alike to feel ourselves the companions and sharers of your 
youthfulness.'" The quotation is from the address of farewell composed by Walter Leaf 
and sent to Miss Harrison when she left Cambridge for Paris in 1922. 

57 Murray changed his text here slightly in response to Mrs Cornford's criticism. The 
phrase is now "lack of any consciousness of age" (p.19). 

58 1942 is nearly certain because Mrs Chadwick's book gives a terminus post quem. 
59 The book is Cornford's incomplete, posthumously published Principium Sapientiae. 

edited by W. K. C. Guthrie (Cambridge 1952). 



136 SOME LETTERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE RITUALISTS 

Here is Mrs. Chadwick.60 Her little book is based on a vast mass of 
material in the 3 fat volumes of the Chadwicks' Growth of Literature 
which I worked through.61 I found it very illuminating because it 
covers the Heroic Age and also the post heroic, i.e., it provides the 
whole background for Homer & Hesiod, which is missing in the 
Greek tradition & so leaves the poets in the air & inexplicable to 
scholars who won't look over the ledge. It is pathetic-the way that 
Bouche-Leclercq for instance in his Divination62 marshals every scrap 
of Greek evidence in a masterly way, but remains quite in the dark 
about much that becomes plain from the comparative evidence. 

I used to be an anti-diffusionist, but the Chadwicks convince me 
that much that we call 'primitive' is really the degenerate & degraded 
remnants of ideas which have spread from the old centres of civiliza­
tion, tho' it wd get contaminated with really primitive ideas. See 
Poetry &- Proph. xiv-xv. 

Thank you for your P.S. about Rosalind's theology.6s This business 
is much in the air just now. 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

February, 1971 

60 N. K. Chadwick, Poetry &- Prophecy (Cambridge 1942). 

Yours ever, 
FMCornford 

61 H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature, 3 vols. (Cambridge 1932-1940). 
82 Auguste Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l' antiquite, 4 vols. (Paris 1879-82). 

83 Rosalind is Murray's daughter, then wife of Arnold J. Toynbee.