Don's Delight

A wit, a detective-story writer (The Viaduct Murder), for twelve years Roman Catholic chaplain at Oxford University, is Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, 51, one of England's three most urbane and influential Catholic priests.* Published in the U. S. this week was Monsignor Knox's latest book, Let Dons Delight./-. To many a reader, Catholic and non-Catholic, this work will bring delight. To others, including many U. S. Catholics who find it difficult to comprehend the lightheartedness and apparent irreverence of their European coreligionists, the book will be shocking.

Let Dons Delight is a series of dialogues among imaginary dons in an imaginary Oxford College (Simon Magus), taking place at 50-year intervals from 1588 to 1938. In the early passages, Monsignor Knox does not spare his readers the "brutish superstitions" and the "idolatrous mass-altars" which were the phrases of anti-Catholics. Nor, later, does he disdain to write comedy:

Mr. Savile: " . . . We were not talking of Rome, but of the Church of England as she is and ever has been, a part of the Catholic Church. ..."

Dr. Greene: "I must beg of you, Mr. Savile, that you will not refer to the English Church as if it were some female of your acquaintance. I tell you, I cannot digest my dinner if you will talk so."

For dons of all persuasions, Monsignor Knox furnishes, between dialogues, imaginary documentation of his characters, some of it in the form of brilliant literary parodies. Best known of the authors whose style he imitates to a comma are James Boswell, Harold Nicolson.

Exuberant "Ronnie" Knox, son of the late Anglican Bishop of Manchester, brother of Editor Edmund George Valpy ("Evoe") Knox of Punch, has been a man of letters since he wrote Latin and Greek epigrams at ten. Brought up an Anglican, he took holy orders soon after leaving Oxford's Balliol College, became Anglican chaplain of Trinity College. Converted to Catholicism before the War, he was ordained priest in 1919. In 1926, the year he became Oxford's chaplain, Father Knox scared England over the radio just as Orson Welles scared the U. S. last autumn: he broadcast a lurid account of a revolution in London, complete with Big Ben Tower blown up, the National Gallery ablaze. Famed at Oxford is "Ronnie" Knox's reply to a fellow-undergraduate who wrote the Hegelian limerick:

There was a young man who said, "God Must think it exceedingly odd That the Juniper tree Just ceases to be When there's no one about in the quad." Wrote Knox: Dear Sir, it is not at all odd, I am always about in the quad.

Thus the Juniper tree Never ceases to be Since observed by yours faithfully God. This summer Monsignor Knox retires from Oxford to execute a commission given him by England's Roman Catholic bishops: a new translation of the Vulgate (Latin) scriptures.

*The others: Rev. Cyril Charlie Martindale, London Jesuit; Rev. Martin Cyril D'Arcy, Master of Oxford's Campion Hall. /-f Sheed & Ward ($3).

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