The story of C.S. Lewis becoming a Christian is world-famous. One of its most famous moments was when Lewis and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien strolled down Addison’s Walk in Oxford and discussed whether Christianity was “a true myth.”
Few people remember a third person at that walk: their mutual friend Hugo Dyson.
What Happened in Hugo Dyson’s Life?
1. Henry Victor Dyson Dyson was born in England (most likely in Hove, Sussex) on Tuesday, April 7, 1896. Jared Lobdell suggests he became known as “Hugo” at school, possibly because his friends were reading Victor Hugo’s adventure stories. David Bratman explains that Dyson’s middle name and surname were the same because children often received the mother’s maiden name as a middle name. His father, Galician immigrant Philippe Tannenbaum, legally changed his surname to Dyson in 1904. The reasons for the change aren’t known. Tannenbaum may have wanted to downplay his nationality (Norman Davies reports that in the 1880s, Galicia was likely “the poorest province in Europe”) or avoid anti-Semitism (Tannenbaum is a common Ashkenazic Jewish surname). Whatever the reason, the change meant that Hugo’s surname changed to Dyson at five years old.
2. In August 1916, after training at Sandhurst, Dyson entered active service in the Royal West Kent regiment’s First Battalion, part of the Third Army. Like Tolkien, Dyson fought in the Battle of the Somme, and like Lewis, he fought in the Battle of Arras. Dyson was injured in November 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres and returned to England.
3. In the fall of 1919, Dyson entered Exeter College, Oxford University. During his studies, he joined several student groups, including the Essay Club, where he met two future Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien and Neville Coghill. At one Essay Club meeting, Dyson heard Tolkien read “The Fall of Gondolin,” making him one of the first Inklings to hear some of Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories.
4. In 1924, Dyson finished his B.Litt degree and accepted a position teaching English Literature at University College in Reading. Within a year, two more events occurred: Dyson married Margaret Robinson, and his college became the University of Reading. He made key contributions to the university’s early years—becoming known for lively lectures, particularly on Elizabethan to eighteenth-century English literature.
5. In July 1930, Dyson came with Coghill to have dinner with Coghill’s friend C.S. Lewis. Lewis wrote a letter about the evening suggesting he’d met Dyson once before— “Having met him once I liked him so well that I determined to get to know him better.” Their conversation was so lively that Coghill left after dinner, but Dyson kept talking with Lewis until 3 am.
6. On September 19, 1931, Dyson joined Tolkien and Lewis for an evening when they walked down Addison’s Walk and discussed Christianity. Alister McGrath observes that Lewis became a theist in 1930, but this Addison’s Walk conversation proved crucial to Lewis becoming a Christian. Most scholars record Tolkien’s side of the conversation—discussions about myth and some thoughts on language that paralleled Owen Barfield’s ideas. Joel D. Heck notes that Dyson stayed longer (spent the night in Lewis’s spare bed and visited Lewis again the next day). Therefore, while Dyson’s words aren’t recorded, he likely contributed as much or more to Lewis’ choice to accept Christianity.
7. In 1933, Lewis began referring to the friends who talked and shared writings in his Magdalen College rooms on Thursday nights as “the Inklings.” Dyson missed many meetings since he lived in Reading. Still, in his appendix for Diana Pavlac Glyer’s The Company They Keep, Bratman notes that Dyson came to many meetings (particularly meetings where the Inklings talked at pubs rather than sharing their work), making him an important if not central member. He is also credited with giving another Inkling a well-known nickname: he called Dr. Robert Havard “Humphrey” by mistake at a meeting.
8. In 1945, Dyson moved to Oxford after getting a fellowship at Merton College. He taught at Merton until his retirement in 1963. The year he retired, the University of York purchased a large section of his personal library through Blackwell’s.
9. After hosting several televised Shakespeare plays and lectures on Shakespeare, Dyson was hired to cameo in a movie. He played Professor Walter Southgate in the 1965 comedy Darling.
10. Dyson passed away at 79 years old in 1979. His grave can be found in Oxford’s St. Cross Church.
Quotes by Hugo Dyson
The Inklings were a large group with varying careers. Lewis, Tolkien, and Charles Williams all published fiction and literary studies. Coghill published multiple studies of Chaucer and is equally well-known for his theatre work with the Oxford University Dramatic Society—his students included Richard Burton.
Dyson published some academic nonfiction. His first book, Poetry and Prose, consisted of notes and an introduction to a collection of Alexander Pope’s writings. He would later co-write a book on the Romantic poets and publish a well-received lecture on Shakespearean tragedy.
However, Dyson is best remembered as a teacher and speaker. An observer at one of Dyson’s Shakespeare lectures stated, “He would stare out over the heads of his audience as if seeing another world, sink himself in the crosscurrents of Shakespeare’s mind, and himself, sometimes, become one of Shakespeare’s images.”
Here is a selection of quotes—snippets from his nonfiction and recorded conversations—that give an idea of his work and personality.
Quotes on Religion and Literature
“Poetry is always renewing itself; every poet in one way or another proclaims a fresh return to nature. There is continual resistance to settled convention.”— “Augustans” in Augustans and Romantics: 1689-1830 by Hugo Dyson and John Bull
“Perhaps the contemporaries whom he excited and fascinated thought of him chiefly as an entertainer . . . Great art, like great wine, requires time for full maturing, and Shakespeare’s absolute supremacy came later.” — The Emergence of Shakespeare’s Tragedy
“To Wordsworth, to be one with his own past, neither to deny it nor to forget it, was of great importance. In light of the past, present happiness is enhanced, present misery endurable.” — “‘The Old Cumberland Beggar’ and Wordsworthian Unities,” collected in Essays on the Eighteenth Century
“It is not blasphemous. . . to believe that what was true of Our Lord is, in its less degree, true of all who are in Him. They go away in order to be with us in a new way, even closer than before.” — a comment made after Williams’ death, quoted in Lewis’ letters.
Quotes from His Life
Along with being a charismatic teacher, Dyson had a lively sense of humor—Lewis once called him “a roaring cataract of nonsense.” Sometimes his humor proved rude—Christopher Tolkien recalls an Inklings meeting where Tolkien began reading from The Lord of the Rings and Dyson yelled, “Oh God, no more elves!”
However, Dyson knew he could be difficult. He even joked about how difficult he could be. Lewis’ brother Warnie recalls Dyson joining him and Lewis on a walking tour where Dyson kept telling stories, saying, “If I stopped, I should become hysterical.” Student Stephen Medcalf recalls Dyson once introducing himself, “I’m Hugo Dyson: I’m a bore.”
These reported conversations give an idea of his humor.
Humphrey Carpenter reports in The Inklings that Dyson once visited Blackwell’s and asked for a secondhand Shakespeare edition. The clerk said the bookstore didn’t have any secondhand copies available. Dyson answered, “Well, take a copy and rub it on the floor, and sell it to me as shop soiled.”
Medcalf recalled Dyson giving students instructions like, “Yes, write an essay. Write an essay. Must have something to stop me talking.”
Warnie Lewis records several funny stories about Dyson in Brothers and Friends. One day when Warnie and Dyson were leaving the Mitre Tap, they passed a child stumbling on the pavement. Dyson said, “Don’t do that, my boy; it hurts you and distresses us.”
In the same book, Warnie recalls drinking with Dyson at the King’s Arms and Dyson saying to a stranger, “You will pardon the liberty, Sir; I trust you don’t think I presume: but I shall call you Fred. You look the sort of man who ought to be called Fred.’”
Lewis recalls in a letter that while Williams was guest lecturing at Oxford, Dyson heard Williams was lecturing on John Milton and “the sage and serious doctrine of virginity.” Dyson responded, “the fellow’s becoming a common chastitute.”
Carpenter reports Dyson only complaining about one thing in the movie Darling: his character’s funeral—because Dyson wasn’t paid for it since he didn’t appear onscreen, and the student eulogy for his character didn’t seem believable. Dyson ended his complaint by saying, “No, one doesn’t like being buried. I’m not ambitious, a quiet, timid man, but I didn’t like being buried.”
Writings about Hugo Dyson
As of this writing, there is no biography of Hugo Dyson. Former students John Carey, Al Alvarez, and P.J. Kavanagh mention him in memoirs. Glyer discusses his influence on other Inklings in The Company They Keep and Bandersnatch. Philip and Carol Zaleski discuss him alongside the other Inklings in The Fellowship.
However, as Lewis and Tolkien’s fame has increased, the Inklings’ lives have been adapted to different media. Some of these materials are biopics. Others use the Inklings as characters for fictional plots.
William Nicholson’s 1985 TV movie and the later play and theatrical Shadowlands only feature Lewis, not the other Inklings. However, they all feature a character named Christopher Riley—who, at least in the TV movie and play, is an opinionated gadfly not unlike Dyson.
The “Swallow the Sun” by Mahonri Stewart by Mahonri Stewart depicts Lewis’ spiritual journey and includes Dyson as a character. Dyson also appears in several conversation scenes talking to Lewis in The Most Reluctant Convert.
Tolkien fictionalized Dyson as Arthur Lowdham in his incomplete time travel novel The Notion Club Papers (included in the book Sauron Defeated). Bratman observes that minor Inkling John Wain has one character in his novel Comedies who makes a Shakespeare comment matching an idea from Dyson’s Shakespearean tragedy lecture.
Dyson appears as a fictional character in several fantasy books featuring characters based on the Inklings: David C. Downing’s novel Looking for the King and James A. Owen’s novel The Indigo King. He also appears in more grounded Inklings fiction, such as Robert Velard’s historical fiction novel Conversations with C.S. Lewis and Richard Kel’s A 1930s Murder Mystery series.
Lessons to Learn from Hugo Dyson
1. Faith should inform all areas of someone’s life. A practicing high church Anglican, Dyson may not have written about Christianity as much as Lewis, but he spoke about it regularly. Medcalf recalls that even Dyson’s casual conversations could feature faith questions, like comparing a hospital swimming pool where patients received communion to the pool of Siloam.
2. Communities may be more complex than they appear. There’s a tendency to see Dyson and his friends as a homogenous group of old white Christian men. However, a look at their denominations—high church Anglican Dyson, anthroposophist Barfield, Anglo-Catholic (and occultist) Williams, and Roman Catholic Tolkien—shows their beliefs had more variety than many realize. Dyson’s Christian ideas were noted for sometimes being unconventional—Medcalf remembers him suggesting things like, “Would you say Hell is God’s unconscious?”
3. Words may hurt more than we expect. While Dyson became known for his cutting commentary, and the Inklings often allowed it to a point, some of his comments did damage. Glyer argues in The Company They Keep that while Tolkien was already feeling discouraged because several other Inklings disliked The Lord of the Rings, Dyson’s “No more elves!” comment particularly hurt. Not long afterward, Tolkien stopped sharing the book at Inklings meetings.
4. Collaboration can be fruitful. While Dyson didn’t co-write any books with other Inklings, Heck reports that during the 1930s, Dyson team-taught several Shakespeare courses at Oxford with fellow Inklings Lewis, Coghill, and Charles Leslie Wrenn, plus other Oxford academics.
5. Fostering conversations matters. Bratman observes one of Dyson’s key contributions at Reading was engaging students from different disciplines in conversation, encouraging them to share ideas.
6. Appearances can be deceiving. Dyson’s love for wordplay led some scholars and students to assume he was more flash than substance. However, many colleagues and students stated that his best lectures showed he had the substance—that he had carefully studied the subject.
7. Strengths carry weaknesses. While Dyson’s personality and wit could be compelling, it sometimes worked against him. Bratman and others have noted his writing sometimes feels like clever words supporting slightly less clever ideas. For example, one great line in Augustans is Dyson describing the hero in Robinson Crusoe: “armed to the teeth, sheltered by his umbrella, guarded by his dog, echoed by his parrot, he is the very soul of industrious and sober England.” Well said and a good point, but not a particularly original point.
8. Change brings challenges which must be faced. Dyson’s change from Reading to Oxford brought many benefits, but also changes he didn’t handle well. Oxford students found Dyson either entertaining or confusingly unhelpful. Some of Dyson’s behavior—like rarely supervising master’s students he was assigned—sound similar to Kingsley Amis’ memories of being supervised by the Inkling Lord David Cecil. So, some of Dyson’s behavior may have been accepted in Oxford don culture. However, some of Dyson’s choices damaged students—George Steiner recalls failing his DPhil viva because Dyson provided no help with his thesis. Tolkien suggested that Dyson felt uncomfortable teaching at a much larger university with a larger workload.
9. Bright minds should be servant minds. While Dyson often made himself look intelligent with his comments, he also used his wits to support his friends’ work. In The Allegory of Love, Lewis thanks him: “The untiring intellect of Mr. H. Dyson of Reading, and the selfless use which he makes of it, are at once spur and bridle to all his friends.”
10. The greatest influence may be those we impact. Dyson may not have published much, but he affected people in other ways. Bratman observes that Dyson’s ideas about literature influenced books by his students—Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play by Anne Righter and The Life and Opinions of T.E. Hulme by Alim R. Jones. He also influenced Lewis and other Inklings, whose work has become world-famous.
Hugo Dyson left a strong impression on everyone who met him. He combined great strengths with great flaws. His strengths show how to be a fun-loving, encouraging member of a Christian community that values fellowship and good minds. His flaws show how easy it is for bright, boisterous people to offend if they’re not careful. Even at his rudest, he remained a good friend and important member of the Inklings.
Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Jelena990
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