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Leamington Letters #72: Death and memory

2/3/2014

74 Comments

 
Most of us, if we are fortunate, had a teacher. A real teacher, who inspired as well as taught, who mentored as well as educated, who selflessly and tirelessly shared both passions and erudition.

In my case, it was Christopher John Dixon. If you were at Oakham School in the mid-60s, when he taught English, or at Victoria College at the University of Toronto where he was subsequently Assistant Professor of English Literature, you will know him as Chris. If you were a reader of obscure novels in the mid-70s, you will know him as Matthew Vaughan, the author of Chalky, which won the first David Higham Prize for Fiction, Major Stepton's War, and The Discretion of  Dominic Ayers. All were excellent. All were unsuccessful. All appear to be out of print but not unavailable. (I commend them to you.)

Chris committed suicide. I don't know precisely why, and I didn't find out about his death until many months after it happened. But I think about him a great deal, whenever I open a volume of poetry, or pick up a literary novel or hear a learned and passionate talk on the radio or in the lecture hall.
Picture
I have been thinking about him especially in the last few days because my friend Parn has sent me a link to recordings of Sylvia Plath reading the poems from Her final volume, Ariel.

It was Chris who introduced Sylvia Plath to me and my English literature classmates. And although we shared the usual rivalries of schoolboys at that time - Dylan v Donovan, Beatles v Stones, Truman v Statham, association v rugby football and so on - the major rivalry in our small group was Plath versus Hughes.

Chris had been at Selwyn College, Cambridge, at the same time as Plath was at the adjacent Newnham. It was rumoured at school that they had briefly dated, which might account for Chris's overt dislike for Hughes, though he was always remarkably complimentary about the poetry itself, and I still have the copies of both Ariel and Crow which he personally gave to me. But he was convinced, and convinced me, that it was Hughes who had driven Plath to suicide, and that the imminence of this suicide was evident in the poems of Ariel and could have been predicted (prevented?) by a close reading, a very practical criticism, of the text.

These days, I understand the situation to be more complex. I know that the poem Daddy was, at least in part, really about her relationship with her father as well as her relationship with her husband. And I know that Hughes was genuinely distraught and destroyed when she eventually succeeded in her suicide. “That's the end of my life” he wrote to a friend (of plath's). “The rest is posthumous.”

Maybe it was. Hughes was an axis around which suicides and potential suicides revolved. Not just Sylvia Plath, but his lover Assia Wevill (who also killed their daughter) and his son Nicholas. I once argued forcibly to a friend who knew the Hughes family that the deaths of both Plath and Wevill could not be unconnected to Hughes; must, indeed, be post hoc ergo propter hoc. My friend suggested politely and reasonably that Hughes may have been a man who attracted those with a predisposition to suicide.

There may be some truth in this.

Where there is truth is in the poems that Sylvia Plath wrote and which became owned by Hughes with the rest of her literary legacy. We are not privy to all of it: some was destroyed, some suppressed, some ’edited’.

But the link sent to me by Parn Taimsalu is to a series of readings which she made in 1962.
I was unaware of these recordings and they are extraordinary. The accent will be familiar to any Bostonian, the poems familiar to all of us. But what is revelatory is that this is her own voice. Pure. Unadulterated. No self-serving gloss by friends or family, enemies or editors. Here you will hear the real, authentic Plath, for whom:

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
74 Comments
John
2/3/2014 12:42:38

Thanks for this. And especially for the YouTube link. There is a much to be said about the Plath Hughes relationship but I am sure wiser commentators than I will be posting soon. For the record, I'm with your teacher.

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TonyP
2/3/2014 13:28:11

Bit dead poets society! until you get to the Youtube clip. Wow.

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Duncan
5/3/2014 11:56:21

Hey, this a little unfair. Dead Poets, yes. History boys, yes. But this is exactly what many of us experienced. And reaped the benefits of someone who was prepared to go beyond the call of duty to educate us. If you didn't, I'm sorry. But many of us were fortunate.

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Ellie
2/3/2014 13:33:18

I am not sure she is quite the feminist icon she was when the gravestone was being desecrated and Hughes under attack on every literary page. But she is still iconic. And your man deserves respect for introducing her to teenage public schoolboys.

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CJ
3/3/2014 07:04:59

Now you have discovered how to embed Youtube into your blog, can we expect vids of Dylan and the Dead rather than just descriptions?! Good piece.

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Allan
3/3/2014 23:38:41

We all changed our minds with the publication of Birthday Letters. The first time Hughes had spoken openly and honestly about his relationship with Plath. He was so much a force of nature that I suspect your friend may have been right. His strength attracted vulnerability.

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JonR
4/3/2014 00:47:59

One would like to say that their personal relationship is no business of ours. But they both made it so by writing so powerfully about it. Hence the fetishisation of Plath (the Sylvia suicide doll) and the continuing obsession with their lives and deaths.

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Rich
5/3/2014 00:59:59

I read Chalky when it first came out, prompted by the award of the David Higham prize. It was a very clever book. Too clever. And so were the subsequent two. Vaughan (or Dixon) was trying to cram too much erudition into his narratives. Not showing off so much as needing a good editor. The Higham prize folded through lack of publicity, and I understood that vaughan's suicide was caused by depression brought on by the lack of critical acclaim. Your blog took me back to Chalky, and skimming it overnight one can see how good it might have been.

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CJ
5/3/2014 01:08:24

... Nick Drake syndrome.

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DavidL
5/3/2014 11:27:01

... More Chatterton I would have thought.

Will
5/3/2014 11:43:31

Jeez. I remember Radio London holding a competition for the best piece arguing for either Dylan or Donovan being superior. The prize was .... A ticket to a Donovan gig!!!!!! So I didn't win.

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Martin Eayrs
10/7/2014 15:50:09

Chris Dixon was my sixth form English Teacher for two years at Oakham School, and the single greatest influence on my education. Through him I came to Bergman and Antonioni, to Burgess and Joyce, to Bosch and Brueghel, to Sibelius and Shostakovich, to Donne and Plat; to him I owe my present and persisting curiosity and firm understanding of the interconnectedness of everything. I never knew what happened to him, although I do remember there was some correspondence at the time in the letters page of the Spectator, not all favourable to him. Thank you for reminding me of my dominie.

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Max
12/7/2014 02:38:11

I agree. The biggest single influence. Have checked out The Spectator correspondence. Dominated by Etonians rather than Oakhamians but Julian Barnes is generous and shares our view. If you can track down Donald Trelford's obit in The Times, to which Charles Moore refers, I would be grateful for the link. Great to hear from you.

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Martin Eayrs link
12/8/2014 12:10:26

There was a letter from Julian Barnes in the Spectator of 15 March 1986, (page 23): URL: http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/15th-march-1986/23/christopher-dixon

I produce the text (reformatted) below: it is a reply to the not very kind comments of Charles Moore in his editorial of the previous week that you allude to.

Christopher Dixon

Sir: When the mighty die, the press queues up to fawn; even journalists expire knowing that they can count on damp-eyed tributes from other journalists. But when a schoolmaster of no wide fame dies while still in his forties, Charles Moore (Diary, 1 March) spends half his obituarial paragraph telling us that Christopher Dixon was 'remarkably pretentious', that his pseudonymous novels were 'luridly bad', that imitating him produced a schoolboy essay which was `a very poor thing indeed', and that the other masters — 'I think' — considered him 'a bad influence'. With such ex-pupils, who needs enemies? I do not know why Mr Moore chose to demonstrate to Spectator readers — few of whom can have known Dixon — how incorruptible of judgment he remains even in the face of death; but if this is the new obituarial method, then I hope I live long enough to see Mr Moore's own death notice written from an equally unsentimental stance.

'But,' Moore concludes, sounding puzzled and grudging, 'Dixon was inspiring.' Well, yes he was. He taught me a few years before he taught Mr Moore. As well as inspiring, he was generous, patient and unpatronising; an electrifying figure cap- able of being sardonic without being hurt- ful, and one who was always encouraging. The other masters — 'I think' — considered him a good influence. We certainly did.

Julian Barnes

8 Dartmouth Park Avenue, London NW5

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Andrew
15/9/2014 02:28:08

It was actually Christopher JAMES Dixon. Also, I think that a Plath/Dixon dating history is unlikely given she married Hughes in 1956 when CJD was serving in the army and had yet to go up to Cambridge.

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Max
15/9/2014 02:41:25

Thank you for this. I was apprehensive about working out the chronology for fear of destroying the myth! Did you know Chris?

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Andrew
15/9/2014 02:47:46

I'm his son.

Max
15/9/2014 03:04:03

I am so sorry. He was an extraordinary man, to whom I owe an immeasurable debt. He touched the lives of so many of us at that time - inspiring, guiding, teaching. As I wrote in the blog, I think of him often. My very best wishes, Max Smith. And thank you for the correction of my sloppy memory.

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Andrew
15/9/2014 04:09:54

It is always nice to hear of the fond memories so many have of him. Frankly, Charles Moore was something of an isolated case. My father actually taught me A Level English so I got to see him from that angle but my fondest memories tend to be rather less to do with high culture. He could be great fun to listen to analysing an episode of Columbo or Viv Richard’s batting or whatever else held his attention at that moment; he always managed to pull his argument together at the last moment through some intellectual Tour de Force (probably involving John Henry Newman). And then break out laughing.

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Max
15/9/2014 04:38:05

Yes. I think we actually only got round to the set books at A level about three weeks before the exam itself because there was so much else to read and talk about. I seem to remember St Thomas Aquinas figuring largely, and Victor Hugo also.

Martin Eayrs link
15/9/2014 06:03:28

Andrew: we have ‘met’, although not in a sense that would allow you to remember. Like Max here I was at Oakham School, a year (or two?) above Max, and your father taught me A-level English - although the A-level syllabus was a small part of what he taught us. My memories are less of Chaucer and Milton than of Nabokov and Burgess. I particularly remember him liking to give us ninety minutes, plenty of paper and a short metaphysical poem and being encouraged to link the content to whatever was in the air he had recently created: Bergman, Breughel, Bellini, whatever. Very provocative exercise: looking back I'm amazed we were capable.

The reason I must have met you was that I was one of the first cohort of College House, Oakham School's Sixth Form University Entrance College. This was in the 65-6 period, and I calculate that you would have been born about this time. There was very definitely a pushchair and (occasionally) bawling infant inhabitant around. No offense intended.

2016 is the 50th anniversary of my leavers' cohort at Oakham, and I am intending to write an appreciation of your father for inclusion in the proceedings. This might well develop into a longer biography, as I have heard from so many people at Oakham (also Cobham Hall, Eton, Radley, City of London) of the profound and lasting effect that he had on them that it is inspiring me to extend my work.

John Buchanan was my and your father’s Headmaster at Oakham. I spoke to him some years after leaving school and he expanded on two claims he had made in his publication 'Operation Oakham': firstly, that your father’s decision to move on was his single biggest setback in the twenty years he was Headmaster of Oakham School, and secondly, that he (your father, this is) was the greatest ‘teacher’ he had ever known in all his long teaching career. The testimonies I am continuing to receive all bear this out, and in all I have read so far the only dissenting voice has been Charles Moore’s; and there I have no shortage of correspondents from Eton to provide an opposite picture. In fact I am as mystified by Moore’s snide and gratuitous comments today as when I first read them in the 'Spectator' back in the 1980s.

I am currently living in Patagonia but shall be in the UK in the New Year. I would very much like to meet you and talk around this project but only if you feel this is appropriate and you are comfortable with it. If so, you can contact me at martin [a/t] eayrs [d.o.t] com, and I suggest we continue to communicate by email. I do hope we can arrange to meet.

Thanks, Max, for the use of this space.

[Martin Eayrs]

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Martin Eayrs link
15/9/2014 06:03:47

Andrew: we have ‘met’, although not in a sense that would allow you to remember. Like Max here I was at Oakham School, a year (or two?) above Max, and your father taught me A-level English - although the A-level syllabus was a small part of what he taught us. My memories are less of Chaucer and Milton than of Nabokov and Burgess. I particularly remember him liking to give us ninety minutes, plenty of paper and a short metaphysical poem and being encouraged to link the content to whatever was in the air he had recently created: Bergman, Breughel, Bellini, whatever. Very provocative exercise: looking back I'm amazed we were capable.

The reason I must have met you was that I was one of the first cohort of College House, Oakham School's Sixth Form University Entrance College. This was in the 65-6 period, and I calculate that you would have been born about this time. There was very definitely a pushchair and (occasionally) bawling infant inhabitant around. No offense intended.

2016 is the 50th anniversary of my leavers' cohort at Oakham, and I am intending to write an appreciation of your father for inclusion in the proceedings. This might well develop into a longer biography, as I have heard from so many people at Oakham (also Cobham Hall, Eton, Radley, City of London) of the profound and lasting effect that he had on them that it is inspiring me to extend my work.

John Buchanan was my and your father’s Headmaster at Oakham. I spoke to him some years after leaving school and he expanded on two claims he had made in his publication 'Operation Oakham': firstly, that your father’s decision to move on was his single biggest setback in the twenty years he was Headmaster of Oakham School, and secondly, that he (your father, this is) was the greatest ‘teacher’ he had ever known in all his long teaching career. The testimonies I am continuing to receive all bear this out, and in all I have read so far the only dissenting voice has been Charles Moore’s; and there I have no shortage of correspondents from Eton to provide an opposite picture. In fact I am as mystified by Moore’s snide and gratuitous comments today as when I first read them in the 'Spectator' back in the 1980s.

I am currently living in Patagonia but shall be in the UK in the New Year. I would very much like to meet you and talk around this project but only if you feel this is appropriate and you are comfortable with it. If so, you can contact me at martin [a/t] eayrs [d.o.t] com, and I suggest we continue to communicate by email. I do hope we can arrange to meet.

Thanks, Max, for the use of this space.

[Martin Eayrs]

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Andrew
15/9/2014 06:58:09

Martin, just sent you a personal message. I was actually born in 1962 so remember College House a bit. Apologies to anyone I distracted with my infant wailings. Then again, one of you dropped me headfirst onto a spiked fence and put me in hospital so I figure we are even!

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Martin Eayrs link
15/9/2014 07:02:12

Very definitely not one of my year :-)

Will get back to you - work looming just now.

Will Hoon
22/4/2015 11:03:12

Hi,

This is really a message for Andrew Dixon who I met many years ago in Massachusetts in 1972 when we were both children. Christopher and my father, Peter Hoon, had been in the army together and had remained friends. My father died a number of years ago, but we discussed Christopher a good deal, stories from their military service and, of course, the novels - particularly Chalky, which we both loved.

I hope you receive this message and best regards

Will Hoon

Richard Francis
15/10/2016 01:20:50

Andrew
You were three when I last saw you at College House. So nice to know you are doing well.
What happened to your mum - I often think about how she kept us going.
And I share all the pleasures of being taught by your dad - save me from being a vet with Gibson's in Oakham.

Max
15/9/2014 11:18:58

You are welcome (to use the space). I hope you can work together to produce something worthy of the man and, as someone who will not be present at the Class of '66 do, would appreciate a copy. Best to both.

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Andrew Dixon
15/10/2016 18:38:16

Hi Richard,

My mum remarried and lives in Surrey. I visited her last week and she was on good form. When I have mentioned people who have posted here she has always remembered them fondly. If you (or anyone else here) has a message for her I would be happy to pass it on.

Steve Weatherly-Barton
8/10/2014 03:47:23

I have passed my own memories of CJD to Martin Eayrs, so I won't take up space here, other than to say that one all-to-brief year of being taught by him at City of London ranks as by far the most inspiring episode of my schooldays. Switching to another teacher for the final push towards A-Level exams was like starting a meal at Les Quatre Saisons and finishing it at MacDonalds!

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Peter d'Aguilar
12/10/2014 09:31:26

Dear Max
I'm very grateful to you for shining a spotlight on one of the very few teachers that meant anything to me at Eton. Christopher Dixon was immensely likeable, funny, eccentric, inspiring and dizzyingly erudite - really too much so for this particular dunderhead. I enjoyed his books and missed, to my great disappointment, the TV version of Dominic Ayres. He was a fine man and deserved more recognition for his teaching and his writing. Very sad to hear of his suicide. He will live on in his pupils' memory.

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Martin Eayrs link
12/10/2014 11:21:35

Peter - thanks for this. Do you have any further details of the TV dramatisation of Dominic Ayres - if I even knew which channel and approximately when it would be a great help. Thanks for anything you can dredge up from memory.

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Andrew
12/10/2014 12:40:35

It was made by Southern Television who changed the setting to something more local (Southampton?). Shown on the ITV network but not in the Thames Television area. As a result I didn’t see it and neither did my father. The few people we knew who had STV access reported it was quite good but not much like the book. This was in the mid-seventies. Pre VHS days I fear.

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Martin Eayrs link
12/10/2014 13:33:01

Many thanks, Peter. A long time ago, but I'll have a look :-)

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John Buckingham
4/1/2015 06:19:53

Dear Martin
I cannot remember who it was who taught us English in our early days at Oakham, but it was pretty uninspiring stuff. This particular dunderhead was regularly towards the bottom of both English and History classes until the arrival at Oakham of Christopher Dixon and Ben Jones, two memorably inspiring teachers who I think might have joined the teaching staff at the same time. Both had a life-long impact not only on high-fliers like yourself, but also on mere mortals like me who didn't go on to university.

I have come across your dialogue started by Max Smith late on, sparked by an article ("I hated boarding and wanted to go to a state school, says Diana's brother" - he was referring to his prep school) in the Saturday 3 January edition of The Times, in which Earl Spencer comments "Lord Spencer, who went on to Eton and then Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied modern history, had fonder memories of his senior school. He paid tribute to the influence of a second teacher, Christopher Dixon, a 'brilliantly intelligent' man who taught him English and encouraged him to think of Oxford.

"He decided that it didn't matter what we were academically - he was going to really broaden our minds.

"One of Lord Spencer's essays, on the relationship between God, humanity and literature in the poems of Johannes Bobrowski, was 'sent up for good', meaning that it was copied on to vellum and kept in the library archives.

"He said: 'Bringing this up is really not a boast. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. This man - whom I admired and much liked - had shown me that I could write, that I could do so much more."

Hear, hear!

John Buckingham

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Martin Eayrs link
4/1/2015 06:40:56

John: many thanks - I think I remember you at Oakham (dimly, I fear, with fifty or so intervening years of dissolute behaviour). I am in the process of writing a biography of Christopher Dixon and thank you for the Times reference , which I shall dig up. If you (or any other reader) would like to share any other memories, anecdotes or reflections I can be reached at mar*tin*@*eay*rs (remove all asterisks).

Max
30/4/2015 03:52:57

I have an atavistic memory of a John Stephens teaching us English at O level. He became housemaster of Chapman's. My first year English was John Buchanan himself - also a fine teacher in a very different way. There was also Michael Hoy (?) who I think arrived in my final year.

Michael Wardell
1/2/2015 18:09:30

Chris Dixon taught me to think! I can honestly say that I learnt more from his lessons and tutorials than any other single teacher tutor lecturer I have had before or since. He was my A Level english teacher and my tutor at Eton 1973-5 and I was very pleased to read your fond memories of him having only just read Charles Moore's "snide and gratuitous comments ". (In my memory of CJD's class Charles was as appreciative as the rest of us - Nick Coleridge, Craig Brown et.al.)
I moved to Australia as soon as I left school and the last time I saw him was when I specifically went to visit him a year later. I only heard about his death in the 90s when I mentioned his name to an OE who turned up in Australia and I was telling him that the only good thing that happened to be at Eton was being taught by Dixon to which he made some callous remark about how he died and I burst into tears. I am also delighted to read that Andrew is hearing all these positive memories of his remarkable father. I have always wanted to try and find Andrew's address so that I could tell him in person what an important influence his father was on my life!

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Andrew
1/2/2015 23:25:44

And now you have.

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Roger
20/3/2015 12:31:05

As an Oundle boy I feel a bit edgy coming onto a blog dominated by Oakhamians - however I've been searching for information on Matthew Vaughan after reading and thoroughly enjoying Major Stepton's War. I would like to post some information on to an online book database, Librarything, about Chris Dixon, as his author's page is empty. Andrew, can I ask if this would be OK with you?

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Adrew
21/3/2015 03:11:42

Please do.

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tom montgomery link
24/3/2015 23:43:41

Andrew, Amazingly, I remember you from Deerfield Academy in 1970, your mom and dad's first year there. I stopped by your colonial house on the main street a couple of times to drop off some trout that I'd caught in the Deerfield River. Your mom probably took a whiff of them and tossed them in the garbage, although your dad was, as always, kind and complimentary. He taught me in an AP English class. I learned more from him that year than in the next four years of English lit. study at college/university. I get to England from time to time and would love to chat sometime, if that's not a great imposition. I too burst into tears when I heard your dad had died. He was hugely influential in my life.
With best wishes, Tom Montgomery, Jackson, Wyoming PS this thanks to a conversation today in Jackson Hole with an old Etonian friend of mine (alas, he wasn't taught by your father) which prompted a web search and led me to Spencer's column, thence here.

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Andrew
25/3/2015 12:42:45

I caught my first fish in the Deerfield River (having failed to do so in the River Gwash)! I doubt very much yours were thrown away; fried trout was considered a treat in our house when I was growing up. I suppose it would have been when we were living in Tullis House? It may be of interest to everyone to know that the Deerfield boys continued the movement to do away with me through head injury, this time through the medium of slamming a car door on my head as I was getting out from the back seat of a two door car. I live in Bristol so if you (or any of the others on here) find yourself nearby and fancy a pint and a chat then I would be happy to. The guilty men know who they are but I don’t remember any names (concussion, no doubt). Also, I have told my mother about all the kind things people have been saying and she sends her love to everyone.

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Tim Klahs
22/8/2020 18:29:33

Andrew,
I too was a member of Tom Montgomery's class at Deerfield. I don't recall ever having met you, but your father was a great inspiration.
As the class of 1970 has gathered electronically to celebrate in these Covid times, there has been a great deal of reminiscences about your father. I don't know if David Weller has shared all of these with you, but I would like to share my own...

"If I can elaborate on my own brief tribute to Chris as David quoted from my class reunion entry, I would like to offer the following (and forgive my growing bombast as I age):

ENCOMIUM

It is certainly one of life’s pleasures when serendipity trumps certitude, and it was such when I was assigned to Chis Dixon’s senior AP English class. After all, the certainty that Bryce Lambert, the previously sole provider of such instruction, was the gold-standard seemed unassailable in light of his many years at Deerfield. Somehow, his flatulence and bursts of cruelty never seemed to sully his reputation for teaching excellence. So, from a departing junior’s vantage point, drawing as my lot an unknown like Mr. Christopher Dixon for the next year had deficiency written all over it, and a dustbin seemed my condemnation as one of his assignees.

But from the first, as he crawled and writhed upon his desk and pepper-sprayed ignorant eyes with stinging erudition, we all experienced a magnificent force. For me, the words, the phrases, the names flew by unabsorbed: agape, epistemology, negative capability, John Donne, Samuel Butler, Henry James. I tried to grasp their meaning and significance, but they flew through me like neutrinos. If I occasionally captured one, while attempting to decipher its meaning, there were several more that flew by uncomprehended. Yet slowly I did make sense of these words and ideas. Finally, it became like first flight, seeing from far above the curvature of the earth, meandering rivers, relentless highways, and city lights overcoming the tenebra of nightfall. The archetypes, literary traditions, thematic points and counterpoints all began to fit together and make sense as a centuries long dynamic coming to terms with the human condition.

But my clumsy words cannot begin to capture the excitement in his class. At that time, we were already lifted up by hormones, adolescent adrenaline, drugs, and wartime protest. Yet the salience of his teaching always stood out even on this highly elevated landscape. At one point, back in the 1980s, I put forward to the Deerfield powers that there should be a designated chair to memorialize Chris’ achievement, but it came to naught. Perhaps this failure was mine. Or perhaps it was because of the shortness of his tenure or the cause of his death. I hope not the latter because to my thinking his was a distinguished and honorable life. In fact, I have never met anyone who did not exhibit some notable form of self-destructive behavior, nor would I have any truck with such a guiltless fool. Regardless, given our track record of having formerly elevated now defenestrated luminaries from our era, it seems time for reconsideration of Chris.

I know from their comments that other students of Chris at other institutions have also been happily imprinted with his life-long mark. I know it was a privilege for me to have experienced such a man, profound and profane, religiously humanistic, benignly powerful. I can only hope that in some small way, we are all the bearers of such grace. After all, it is really a matter of what heritage we deem to be worthy of perpetuating. "

Tom Montgomery
25/3/2015 16:25:07

Andrew, Drop me a line if you'd like at my email, [email protected] Would love to chat some more. I almost feel as though I remember the story of your first trout (caught with your mother's help?), but that may be a trick of memory. Best to you and to her too, after all these long years. Tom

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Martin Eayrs link
27/3/2015 02:05:05

Andrew

The plot thickens. So, it was not just the College House students at Oakham who tried to bring your short life to an end by dropping you on your head, but also the Deerfield students who attempted your demise by other means. One is led to wonder how objectionable a young lad you must have been ...

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Andrew
27/3/2015 04:03:53

Well, what can I say……despite their reputation for Bullingdon-style dastardliness no Etonian ever assaulted me with homicidal intent! Not yet, anyway.

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Tom Montgomery
22/4/2015 11:54:48

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Martin Eayrs link
30/4/2015 04:10:26

Hi Max: Hope all is well with you. Your 'John Stevens' was in fact a Michael Stevens - he was my house master in Chapmans too, and my English Teacher for a short while. He died fairly recently: see http://announce.jpress.co.uk/rutland-times/obituary/michael-stevens/13478812?s_source=jpmi_rutl and https://www.oakham.rutland.sch.uk/OOs_and_Foundation/News/2012/News/Michael_Stevens_Thanksgiving_Service.aspx.

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Max
30/4/2015 04:54:24

Ah, so it was. He was not my favourite teacher but then I was certainly not his favourite pupil. Thanks for the obituaries links. How's the memoir going?

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Martin Eayrs link
30/4/2015 05:24:04

A strict and forbidding man in my memory. However, I once turned up as happens in the middle of the summer - I'd been hitching north and got stranded on the A1 so made for Oakham. I knocked on the door and asked if I could put my tent up on Far Side and he offered me a bed. I stuck to the tent, but did accept the offer of an early breakfast - he and his wife Mary were kind and considerate, very different from in term time. I think being a housemaster must be a difficult balancing act between being on the one side 'hard' enough to maintain order and discipline and on the other showing sufficient compassion and understanding. All this with testosterone fuelled teenage boys. Perhaps he was learning this at the time we were there, but I do remember him as being fair if a little stern.

The memoir as you put it is progressing, albeit slowly – I’ve had quite a lot of work recently (which is good, as I don’t receive a pension), and also one or two health issues – in particular, arthritis, which I’m finding increasingly fatiguing, both mentally and physically. But I’m plugging away at it.

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Victoria Adefala
7/6/2015 09:46:11

I was a student of Divinity A levels at Cobham Hall 1984 set.That class was taken by our Head master Christopher Dixon....like many have said on this blog ,he was the best teacher I ever had.He helped broaden my mind and through him I learnt to expand my thinking and to seek, to enquire. ..He was a truly great man.I do not imagine that any one who experienced his teaching or guidance would not remember him for good. To Andrew your dad was an Icon.Victoria Adefala (nee Nkuku) from the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

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Sara Litchfield-Pratt
28/3/2022 22:53:50

Hello Vicky, I have wondered about you since we left school. I was with you studying theology for A’level at Cobham Hall. I completely agree with you Christopher Dixon changed my life he was the most inspiration and charismatic teacher. His lessons where exciting and challenging he taught me how to question and learn. He gave me confidence in myself and believe in my abilities to actually take my A’level and pass, which I had always doubted. We were so lucky to have had a teacher like him who had so much confidence in us and I hope he realised how much he was respected and admired by his pupils.
Sara

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Andrew
9/6/2015 05:32:56

Hi Victoria - that is very nice of you to say. I remember that my dad really enjoyed teaching Divinity in general and that class in particular.

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David
8/6/2021 18:27:03

Andrew, your father taught me at Radley from 1984 until his death. He was unquestionably the greatest and most inspiring teacher I ever encountered. By a country mile. He transformed a group of lazy A-level students studying English because they had lacked the imagination to identify an alternative 3rd A-level into people who could not wait for their next lesson. It was the greatest of privileges to have been taught by him.

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Andrew Dixon
20/4/2016 07:39:30

Some of you may find this interesting: https://harryeyres.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/enigmas-that-refuse-to-be-unwrapped-don-siegel-christopher-dixon-coogans-bluff/

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Phillip Routh link
28/12/2016 18:36:03

I read Chalky, then found this blog in which I learned more about the author. Sorry about the suicide, but the novel is pretty bleak.
Maybe my review will be on interest:

Chalky – Matthew Vaughan
This resolutely idiosyncratic novel was written by a twentieth century author, but the setting is the Victorian England that Victorian English writers don’t concern themselves with. The opening sentence: “Chalky sat in the corner of the room and chewed his piece of rag while the snake-swallower vomited into a battered bucket over by the bed.” Three-year-old Chalky is abandoned by his prostitute mother and is taken to a Church orphanage whose manager is a sadist and a pederast. When Chalky emerges as a distinct personality he’s a thirteen-year-old who is physically strong, intelligent, and determined; his first act is to bring about the downfall of the manager. The reverend who had taken Chalky to the orphanage sees potential in the boy, and he educates him (how to speak correctly, what books to read, etc.). But though Chalky absorbs, his ideas and personality are set. The most important element in his makeup is his reserve: he’s composed, stoical. He has two sexual encounters in his entire life (described in a detail that would make D. H. blush); they’re releases from his self-imposed repression, but are followed by a resumption of defenses against such release. As a profession, Chalky selects the military; he’s perfectly suited for that life, and he rises in the ranks. When Vaughan stuck to factual episodes, the book flowed, was very readable. But he clutters things up with long, erudite asides about religion, metaphysics, etc. And too many events are contrived. Most significant is the ending, which involves an encounter in Africa with a sect of “snake-men” (yes, more snakes). Chalky’s plan to have his platoon captured and then rescued is just plain dumb. The scene that ensues is as nightmarish as the opening one – purposely so. It exists only so Vaughan can have Chalky relive childhood terrors. This is a novel that fails in some ways, but which is endowed with an inner conviction. Ultimately I cared about Chalky. Or, rather I felt sympathy for the fact of his isolation, and that may have been what Vaughan was aiming for.

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Malcolm Rogers
2/5/2017 07:11:45

I was one of CJD's first pupils at Oakham, and he was without doubt the most inspiring and influential teacher I ever had, raising my meagre talents to a far higher level. I've always wanted to know more about his later life. I several times babysat Andrew, but was not the one who injured him!

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Fred Rich
10/12/2017 22:33:51

I was a student of Dixon's at Deerfield. As others have noted, no other teacher, at the secondary or tertiary level, had a greater influence on me. Whenever Elgar, or Wordsworth, or early church heresies or references to natura naturata/natura naturans cross my path, I think of Dixon. A superb teacher and a great loss.

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JL
18/2/2018 18:53:22

Interesting. I found CJD to be unsympathetic, cruel, yet he had the manners to apologise to me.
I was raped by two poachers in our school grounds one afternoon in may 1983 after school and before supper. Being in shock, bruised facially and bleeding, when I turned up for supper I couldn’t speak.. mr&mrs dixon consulted each other and mrs Dixon excused me from the table, saying I wasn’t well and to go and see the nurse. I was asked to strip, I wouldn’t. Mr Dixon called my stepdad and told him to collect me from school immediately since I had gone out of bounds and allegedly been smoking, advising my stepfather to give me a good beating to make sure I understand the severity of the situation. My stepfather duly did as bid. I returned to school three days later with numerously more bruises, legitimised by CJD’s words in the shape of a slipper. I felt very ill and went to the sickbay where I stole all the sleeping pills I could find. Taking them all, I awoke a couple of days later. In the sickbay again.
When I returned to my dorm and to lessons, I stayed behind in study time, to ask Mr Dixon if he still thought it was appropriate to have suggested this punishment. He asked what I would rather had happened. I said next time I hope I am killed in the act of rape, since I haven’t handled the subsequent beatings and feelings very well.
He said he was sorry, if there was anything he could do and perhaps girls should be treated differently to boys. This was the first and only kindness he had shown me. I regret not speaking out before now and that I cannot have another conversation about it as a 48yr old woman. I left the school within six months and sadly he died soon after.

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Lynn Beaudry
11/2/2020 20:34:25

JL, I was in your year at Cobham Hall. I commend you for speaking out about your experience. I hope that you have been able to find support for processing what happened to you in a way that brings you health and healing. The only way for change to happen is for people involved in sexual assault to shine a light on how it permanently changes all parties. Please contact me if you would like. I have a similar childhood experience. I am also mothering daughters who are recovering from sexual abuse/assault in a much more supportive, although far from perfect, time and place. I was very sorry to hear of Mr. Dixon's death and like to assume that he would do what he could to help you now if he were able. On behalf of your year mates from Cobham please know that we are thinking of you and that you are not alone. I am sure that any one, or many, of us would be more than welcoming should you chose to reach out to us. All the best to you. Lynn

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Richard Francis
5/8/2020 02:37:07

I was in Malcolm Roger's class at Oakham. We were both day boys who lived in Cottesmore. During the holidays Chris DIxon volunteered to teach usto improve our Oxbridge chances. He was spending his summer writing his 'thrillers' and he allowed us to see snippets.
The most inspiring teacher I have ever met.
I too was in College House and did not injure Andrew.

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Jock Howard
19/12/2020 21:46:51

Gosh! I am so glad to have come across this thread! CJD hugely influenced me, in so many ways - perhaps more than anyone else I have ever met. I remember him as an extraordinarily kind man. During lessons he would climb and kneel in contorted fashion on top of desks, as his enthusiasm for subjects (William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, The Wreck of the Deutschland etc etc) ran away with him. His enthusiasm for life and wicked sense of humour were unforgettable. I often think about him...

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Andrew Dixon
20/12/2020 17:15:23

That took me right back to Caxton Schools: "Caddy smelled like trees".

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Steve Weatherly-Barton
20/12/2020 23:38:12

I had a notification saying ‘Subscription cancelled.’ I should very much like to be kept in touch, not least because I am still working on a novel in which a fictitious but sympathetic portrayal of CJD plays a prominent part.

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Steve Weatherly-Barton
28/2/2022 21:50:31

I had an enforced change of email address last year, when my provider (madasafish.com) became unreliable. Would you please reopen my subscription using my new address.

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Stephen Newberry
19/1/2022 12:52:36

I've just come across this thread. Chris Dixon was my English teacher at Oakham when I was about fourteen. I remember us calling him Chris, rather than Mr Dixon, and really looking forward to his lessons. He was very eccentric and at least once came to a lesson having forgotten to tuck his shirt into his trousers. He was very kind, and encouraging with my florid writing style - which has helped me considerably in my fifty years as an estate agent! I was really disappointed when I discovered that he wasn't going to teach me the following year, as he'd left to go abroad. He was definitely one of the nicest people I have ever met. The thought of him committing suicide saddens me even now.

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Martin Eayrs link
19/1/2022 13:44:09

I think you must have been in the year below me - I had two years of Chris Dixon and was in the first year's intake of College House with him as housemaster. Did you have a brother called Andrew? As for CJD, probably the biggest influence on my life and development.

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Stephen Newberry
19/1/2022 13:54:48

Yes, my brother was Andrew who was three years older than me. We both joined Oakham in 1963, him in Deanscroft, me in Hodge Wing. Chris Dixon leaving Oakham was one of the big disappoinments in my life (I've had several!).

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malcolm rogers
19/1/2022 14:52:00

I knew Andrew quite well and can just remember you. Andrew and I were fellow organists studying with John Dussek (nice man; his widow Mollie died about two years ago in Cornwal)l. Andrew went on to be a professional musician, but then disappeared. I hope you don't mind my asking, but did he too pass away? I've several times tried to trace him.

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Stephen Newberry
20/1/2022 13:20:28

Hello Malcolm. I've a vague idea your uncle had a butcher's shop in Masham. Can this be true? Or am I just being an estate agent and making things up as I go along. Yes, John Dussek was indeed a nice man, very kind. Andrew was organ scholar at Selwyn Cambridge, assistant organist at Peterborough Cathedral then changed careers to be a music teacher at a South London comprehensive. Unfortunately he died falling down some stairs 22 years ago.

Max Smith link
19/1/2022 14:38:13

Hello Stephen
I remember your brother. Think I sat next to him in o level Latin. Very bright. Like you, remember Chris with great affection and gratitude.

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malcolm rogers
20/1/2022 14:24:04

Hello Stephen
Sorry to hear of Andrew's early death. Did he have a family?
I come from a family of butchers and farmers: Masham, Uppingham and Cottesmore. Do you have a connection with Masham, where I believe a cousin still have a butcher's business? If you do know Masham, can you explain J.K. Rowling's fascination with it?

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Lisa Shaddick
9/7/2022 11:33:00

I was a student at Cobham Hall and Mr Dixon was my headmaster my last year there 1982 when I completed my O Levels. I was desperately homesick and suffering from what I later understood was anorexia. He was very kind and compassionate to me in an otherwise very strict environment, and I have exceptionally fond memories of him. It makes me very sad to know he was in whatever turmoil that caused him to take his life. I also remember his son visiting - it’s a girls school, of course I do!

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Nigel Newton
30/6/2023 08:20:33

I was fascinated to be sent the link to these exchanges by friends from Deerfield where we have just gathered for our 50th reunion. There was much talk at that reunion of the influence of Mr Dixon on our lives. In my case, he taught me, a native of San Francisco,intensively for the Oxbridge entrance exam and I went to Selwyn College, Cambridge as a result. I knew Christine and Andrew well as this extra tutoring happened in their front room at Deerfield . In the first month, Mr Dixon made me read a play by Shakespeare a night and write an essay. He numbered the Signet paperback editions with the Glaser artworks 1to 36 for me to read in chronological order of writing- it was heady stuff.
I ended up staying in England where I am to this day all thanks to Dixon. He over performed in giving me a love of books and I became a publisher.
(Greetings Andrew !)

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     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

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