What Made Lord David Cecil a Surprising Member of the Inklings?

The Inklings are famous today for meeting in Oxford to discuss their writing, particularly for its members C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. But there were plenty of other members over the years whose lives have been understudied. Lord David Cecil, who might be called the Aristocratic Inkling, is a good example.

Like many other Inklings, Cecil taught literature at Oxford and wrote books. His writings on Christianity aren’t easy to find today, but they were substantial enough that writers like Dorothy L. Sayers quoted him. His books about famous authors and other artists may not seem as exciting as The Lord of the Rings, but they can teach readers and writers important lessons about understanding the past.

So, let’s explore what this often-forgotten Inkling did with his life.

How Did Lord David Cecil Grow Up?

As noted earlier, Lord David Cecil came from an aristocratic family. He was born Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil on April 9, 1902, in Hertfordshire, England. While he wasn’t the only Inkling with aristocratic roots—Nevill Coghill was the son of an Irish baronet—Cecil’s family had especially prominent credentials. His father and grandfather were both prominent politicians—his grandfather, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, was Britain’s Prime Minister three times. His father was the fourth Marquess of Salisbury, but Cecil didn’t inherit that title as the youngest son. So, his “lord” title was honorary. Cecil would tell the story of this historic family in The Cecils at Hatfield House.

His friend Isaiah Berlin recalled in Personal Impressions that Cecil said “his earliest memories, as a boy, were of a house full of talk—sharp, articulate, amusing. He spoke of the atmosphere of total freedom and spontaneity in which everything was discussed at his parents’ hospitable table, in particular, as was very often the case, when his uncles Robert and Hugh—the political sons of the great Victorian Prime Minister—and the future Bishop of Exeter, William, were present.”

Introductions to Cecil’s life often highlight how his early health problems seemed to set him up for a career in words: he contracted tuberculosis at age eight. He spent much time recovering in bed, which led to reading many books.

When he did move on to university, Cecil had to decide whether his passion for words would mean a career in writing or teaching.

How Did Lord David Cecil Become a Teacher?

In a 1969 episode of the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs, Cecil recalled that he never planned to follow the family legacy of politics: “I knew nothing but politicians all the time I was a child, I was very fond of them all, and I never wanted to follow them.” He planned instead to be a writer but became a teacher because “my father very properly said I should have a regular profession . . . when I began it, I found I enjoyed teaching very much.”

Cecil entered Christ College, Oxford, in 1920, graduating in 1924. He became a fellow of Wadham College the same year and continued teaching at Wadham until 1930. John D. Rateliffe observes that he became involved in a famous debate often mentioned in Lewis and Tolkien biographies. When Lewis began teaching at Oxford in the 1920s, staff were discussing overhauling Oxford’s English literature syllabus to include books written after the medieval period. Tolkien and Lewis discovered at their first meeting that they disagreed sharply on what to do, but they eventually came to the same conclusion (not to include newer literature). Cecil took the opposing view. Ultimately, the faculty compromised and included “modern literature,” but only up to 1830.

After winning the Hawthendorn Prize in 1929 for his biography of William Cowper, Cecil stepped away from teaching to write full-time. He returned to academia in 1939, becoming a fellow of New College, Oxford. He held a one-year professorship of Rhetoric at Gresham College in London from 1947-1948 but returned to Oxford in 1948 when he gained the Goldsmith’s Chair of English. He held that post until he retired in 1970.

During his decades of teaching, Cecil delivered memorable lectures on figures like novelist Thomas Hardy and painters Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones. One student, Kingsley Amis, was unimpressed: he portrayed Cecil as a poor tutor and lecturer in his book Memoirs. Orlando Bird suggests Amis may have satirized Cecil as Professor Welch in his novel Lucky Jim. However, Rateliffe notes that Amis didn’t like most of his teachers, and the portrayal seems exaggerated. Other students, including future scholar John Bailey, quite liked Cecil. Bailey later married philosopher-novelist Iris Murdoch, and Cecil became good friends with both of them.

All the while Cecil was teaching, he was also involved in an eccentric part of the Oxford teaching culture: the Inklings.

What Did Lord David Cecil Do in the Inklings?

It’s not clear when Cecil began attending the Inklings, but it is clear he brought something unusual to the group. In a review published in The Bookman of Humphrey Carpenter’s seminal book on the group, Cecil says he attended the meetings but was one of the attendees “who did not share The Inklings’ distinctive point of view but who liked spending an evening in their company.”

Based on his description of the group’s point of view, he may mean he did not share Lewis or Tolkien’s love for fantasy, or maybe their disinterest in modern literature. Still, Cecil says, “I found such evenings enjoyable and stimulating; and all the more because the spirit of The Inklings was in piquant contrast to those of the Oxford circles in which I spent most of my time.”

If Cecil meant that he didn’t share all the Inklings’ views on literature, his writing seems to bear that out. While he did review a book on George MacDonald (whose fairytales famously influenced Lewis) in 1963, most of Cecil’s writings were about more modern writers.

While Cecil describes himself as an occasional Inkling and downplays how much he influenced them or shared their passions, there is more to the story. For one thing, the fact he reviewed the first book about the Inklings makes him not just a member, but also a member responding to how scholars perceived the group.

Cecil also worked with other Inklings on one occasion—he was an associate editor for The New Book of Modern Verse, with Charles Williams as lead editor.

Cecil also introduced an important person into Lewis’ life: in 1941, he showed some of Lewis’ poetry to a literary friend, Ruth Pitter. Pitter began reading Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters after that and credited Lewis’ BBC radio talks with converting her to Christianity and helping her survive deep depression. Lewis and Pitter became close friends in the mid-1940s, so close that various friends were surprised when Lewis married Joy Davidman instead.

What Did Lord David Cecil Say about Christianity?

Lewis described the Inklings’ only membership rule as “a tendency to write, and Christianity.” Cecil did not write as prolifically about his faith as Lewis, but his nonfiction showed his faith informed how he saw the world. Bradley J. Birzer notes that a key feature in his book on Cowper is how Cecil writes about Cowper’s faith, a faith that enabled Cowper to embrace imagination and create great art. Cecil also discussed his beliefs in several articles, including a quote that impressed Dorothy L. Sayers, a good friend of Lewis and Williams:

“The jargon of the philosophy of progress taught us to think that the savage and the primitive state of man is behind us; we still talk of the present ‘return to barbarism.’ But barbarism is not behind us, it is beneath us. . . . Christianity has compelled the mind of man, not because it is the most cheering view of human existence, but because it is truest to the facts.”

Sayers quoted these two passages in her books Creed or Chaos? and The Mind of the Maker. Because both books are still in print today, apologetics resources sometimes mistakenly attribute these two quotes to Sayers.

Who Were Some of Lord David Cecil’s Famous Friends?

While Lewis and Tolkien were never associated with modern literary trends, Cecil became part of the fashionable literary circles early. In the 1920s, he was invited to attend literary teas hosted by Lady Ottoline Morrell, where he met T.S. Eliot and others. A famous photograph by Morrell shows Cecil, only 21 years old, talking with Eliot and other writers.

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Reports vary about what impression Cecil made on these writers. Eliot recalled in a December 27, 1934, letter to Orlo Williams that Cecil was “a nice fellow, but he never struck me as having any very distinguished qualities.” However, the two men did share the same social circle for years—a 1931 photograph shows Cecil talking with Eliot’s first wife, Vivienne Leigh.

Cecil cemented his modern literary connections in 1932 when he married Rachel MacCarthy, daughter of critic Desmond MacCarthy. Rachel was also a writer—she published a novel, Theresa’s Choice, about a young woman finding romance and direction, in 1958. New York Times reviewer Betty Adler observed that the book “paints a pleasant and vivid picture of London society in the Twenties.”

Marrying a fellow writer whose father was part of the original Bloomsbury Group further connected Cecil to modernist writers, including Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey. Cecil provided many recollections of these literary friends or acquaintances for documentaries like Virginia Woolf: A Night’s Darkness, A Day’s Sail and audio collections like The Spoken Word: The Bloomsbury Group.

Cecil’s friendships meant he would be worth studying just to learn what he could tell readers about spending time with these famous writers; however, he was more than just a teacher who hobnobbed with famous figures. He also wrote books himself.

What Did Lord David Cecil Write?

Although Eliot may not have been impressed with Cecil in the 1930s, that may be because Cecil’s career was only beginning. By 1934, Cecil had published a puzzle book with Cynthia Asquith, his biography of William Cowper, and a book called Early Victorian Novelists. The third book, released that year, seems to have been underrated: Donald Hawes notes it contained a chapter on George Eliot that may have been “the only substantial critical account of her work” between 1902 and the 1940s. It wasn’t until over a decade later that most scholars would take Cecil’s direction.

If Cecil hadn’t distinguished himself much yet, he would soon. He made a prophetic shift in 1936 when he edited An Anthology of Modern Biography. Robert C. Stroud notes that the introduction makes an important point about how biographies had changed. Cecil writes that biography may not seem an important genre, but it was the only modern genre that had taken a new form: “We can talk of modern poetry and modern novels, but these are only new variations on old forms.”

Biography, in contrast, had developed a new form because the goals had changed. Past biographers aimed to give facts and perhaps create something literary. Now, “for the typical modern biographer literature comes first. Mr. Lytton Strachey writes about Queen Victoria, not in order to give us information about her, but because he thinks her life an excellent subject for a work of art. . . He [takes the facts and] weaves them into a story, grouping them in order and proportion that will make his picture as vivid and entertaining as possible.”

Less than five years after writing these words, Cecil made his mark as a substantial and literary biographer. In 1939, he published the first book in a three-part biography of Lord Melbourne. Harry Lee Poe observes the book attracted some famous fans, including John F. Kennedy.

The acclaim would continue. Throughout the rest of his life, Cecil wrote biographies of figures such as Charles Lamb, Sir Walter Scott, Max Beerbohm, Jane Austen, and a dual biography of Dorothy Osborne and Thomas Gray.

After retiring in 1970, Cecil became a popular guest on TV shows like A Picture of England and The Book Programme, as well as a documentary about Eton College titled The Gentleman Factory.

By the time Cecil passed away on January 1, 1986, in Dorset, England, he had left a considerable legacy. One obituary, by his acquaintance Harold Christopher Tennyson, said, “we have lost one of those rare literary figures, not just a great creative talent, but also a great critic and appreciator.”

Best Books by Lord David Cecil

Cecil wrote many books, but these are some of his best-known works.

1. The Stricken Deer: Or the Life of William Cowper