Bailey Cyril

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Biografie:
CYRIL BAILEY (1871- 1957)
Cyril Bailey died on December 5, 1957; he was in his eighty-seventh year. Few scholars equalling him in distinction, modesty and humanity have been among our members. As a Fellow and Classics tutor of Balliol, he was to several generations of undergraduates the outstanding influence of their Oxford days. One, now a prominent scholastic figure, has written : ' For undergraduates at Balliol, the Oxford of our time was focused in him ; its liberalism, its earnest sympathy, its inspiration.' To a wider public in Britain and abroad he was known as one of the great classicists of his generation and one of Oxford's most distinguished Public Orators. But to him men were more important than scholarship ; throughout his long retirement he was rewarded by the continuing devotion of those he had known as undergraduates or of friends more recently gained.
Dons, particularly classical dons, are often regarded as narrow in their outlook and disinterested in the world's practical affairs. This description was never less applicable to any man. Often in his last years he deplored the misfortune that his education had not fitted him to talk intelligently with scientists. He had in fact little need for this regret ; his interest in all human activities gave him a quite unusual capacity to make contact with his companions on any subject, causing them in retrospect to be surprised at the extent to which they had discussed their own subjects in interested and discerning company.
A love of mountains came to him from his father, one of the early members of the Alpine Club, and to the end the recollection of mountains, reading and talking of them, remained a source of intense pleasure. The triumph of John Hunt's Everest expedition delighted him both because of their achievement and the spirit of the team. Although he had not climbed, and then but modestly, since many of the day's most prominent climbers were born, he had a ' modern ' outlook. Crampons had been suspect, pitons anathema to many of his contemporaries, but though he had met only a few of the new generation he had read their articles or their books, and this led him increasingly to admire and approve their methods.
Details of Cyril Bailey's alpine record are, of intention, excluded from this memoir. At the summer meeting of 1938 he addressed the Club, choosing' The Treasures of the Humble ' as the title of his paper. His reminiscences of his climbing, which started in 1891, were so filled with humour, and with the recollection of intense enjoyment, gained mainly on the lesser peaks of the Valais, that any attempt to retell them would be unwise, to use no stronger term. As in his scholarship, enjoyment came through the appreciation of beauty, through the realisation that enjoyment is a product of one's own exertions, above all through friendships. . . . ' There are two things that knit man to man more than any others ; one is to have been on the same rope on a good climb, the other to have sung the choruses of the B minor Mass side by side.' For music was another great enthusiasm. He had resources denied to a later generation for passing ill weather in the mountains ; with Frank Fletcher, later headmaster of Charter house, he rendered the Badminton Mountaineering into Latin prose.
It is only regretted that Bailey was so little known to the Club in the last years of his life ; though he could claim that his alpine achievements were negligible, he represented a part of the tradition we commemorated at the Centenary which the future will find most difficult to replace.
Cyril Bailey is survived by his widow, who for over half his life shared greatly in his interests, and by three daughters and a son. To them the Club extends its sympathy.
R. Scott Russell.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 63. Nr. 296, 1958, Seite 102-103


Geboren am:
1871
Gestorben am:
05.12.1957