https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3516659.html

This is a lovely lovely biography of Helen Waddell (1889-1965), a medievalist from Northern Ireland (though bron in Tokyo wher her grandfatehr was a missionary). She hit the big time in 1927 with the publication of her book The Wandering Scholars, and had several more successes in the next ten years, including a novel about Peter Abelard, before the war distracted her and, sadly, from 1950 she was no longer in mental shape to continue writing.

It's a story with a lot of sadness. Her father and mother both died when she was a girl; she was left caring for her stepmother in a very small house in North Belfast. Two brothers died in the first world war. She was quite explicitly blocked by her gender from getting the lectureship at Queen's that she was surely entitled to. She found love only late in her life, with her publisher Otto Kyllman.

And yet at the same time her prose breathes enthusiasm and love for her subjects which is just hugely effective. Her first book, Lyrics from the Chinese (1913) is online; in her introduction she makes it clear where her heart really lies.

"IT is by candlelight one enters Babylon; and all roads lead to Babylon, provided it is by candlelight one journeys. It was by candlelight that John Milton read Didorus Siculus, and by the Third Book he had voyaged beyond the Cape of Hope and now was past Mozambic, and already felt freshly blowing on his face

- 'Sabean odours from the spicie shore
- Of Arabie the blest.'

It was by candlelight that the sea coast of Bohemia was discovered, and the finding of it made a winter's tale. Baghdad is not a city to be seen by day; candlelight is the only illumination for all Arabian nights.

One sees most by candlelight, because one sees little. There is a magic ring, and in it all things shine with a yellow shining, and round it wavers the eager dark. This is the magic of the lyrics of the twelfth century in France, lit candles in 'a casement ope at night,' starring the dusk in Babylon; candles flare and gutter in the meaner streets, Villon's lyrics, these; candles flame in its cathedral-darkness, Latin hymns of the Middle Ages, of Thomas of Celano and Bernard of Morlaix. For if Babylon has its Quartier Latin, it has also its Notre Dame. The Middle Ages are the Babylon of the religious heart."

It is difficult to overstate just how big a cultural figure she was in Britain in the years before the second world war. She received honorary degrees from Columbia, Queen's Belfast, Durham and St. Andrews (this for someone who Queen's had failed to hire twenty years earlier), and went to lunch with Queen Mary in 10 Downing Street at the invitation of Stanley Baldwin. Curiously, she never particularly intersected with fellow Ulster exile C.S. Lewis; each of them has a couple of notes of bumping into the other at dinners or parties, but they were not friends.

I admit also that part of her attraction for me is her proximity to my own roots. As a child and young woman, she would escape Belfast to her relatives in Ballygowan House, which is on literally the next hill over from my own ancestral home. In a speech to Banbridge Academy (the school which my second cousins attended), she spoke of

"all this countryside that Banbridge lies at the heart of, names that are themselves like an old folk song or a come-all-ye, Closkelt and Ballyroney, Annabawn and Drumgooland, Loughbrickland and Donaghmore; Ouley and Ballooley, Kilmacrew and Ballygowan and Dromore; these are the names that I heard from my aunts around the fire, and these were the houses where my great-grandfathers went courting my great-grandmothers."

Once Ballygowan passed out of family hands, her refuge became her sister's house at Kilmacrew on the other side of Banbridge, where her brother-in-law was the local minister, and their great-granddaughter still keeps her great-great-aunt's spirit alive. She was kind enough to be hospitable to me, Anne and Anne's mother a couple of years back.

She eventually died in London in 1965, but rests near Kilmacrew in Magherally churchyard with her great-grandmother. The inscription is hard to read these days, but I give a transcription below, including eccentric capitalisations.

Here resteth the remains
of her whose name in youth was
Jane DONWOODY,
married to Ebenezer Martin
23rd Decemr. 1801
and after a short life
Pleasantly spent in the ways of
Religion, strict and tender
Attention to her near Relatives,
Departed 22nd May 1815 aged 41,
Leaving seven children
and a disconsolate Husband
Waiting to follow.

Here also resteth their great grand-daughter
Helen WADDELL, M.A., D.Litt., younger daughter of
Rev. Hugh Waddell, Tokio, Japan,
born 31st May 1889, died 5th March 1965.
Scholar, Author, Poet. She lifted A veil from the past.
her Prose Made its Saints and Scholars Live Again.
Her English verse
Made lovely lyrics of their Latin Songs.
Her life Enriched all who Knew Her.
"The Light is on Thy Head."

The biography is, as I said, a lovely lovely book. ( )