Grice and Oxford of the 1930s

--- by J. L. Speranza
-------- for the Grice Club.

THIS IS WHAT IS SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS "Grice between the wars".

In September 1939, when Chamberlain declared war on Hitler, Oxford was closed. And Grice had arrived in 'the Dreaming Spires' in 1935. So we have

1935.
1936.
1937.
1938

---- 1939: preparation for the war.

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What did Grice achieve in those days. The main achievement was his non-participation in those rather hateful meetings on Thursday evenings at All Souls. In Conversations with a furriner, Berlin recalled this as being 'lunchtime' but, in Oxford, 'lunch time' can be anytime after boring tutorials and skipping the even MORE boring talkative talks by the three W's (the Waynflete, the Wykeham, and the White).

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Grice recalled (in tape, archival material -- cited by Chapman).

"I was lucky never to have to attempted
to attend the mettings at Berlin's rooms.
I had been brought up, he said, "on the
wrong side of the tracks".

These were rich, stinky, filthy rich -- and Grice disliked him. J. L. Austin, who was a snob, attended. (And so did Sir Stuart, as he then wasn't) Hamsphire. And of course Freddie Ayer, who although not rich, appeared like one.

Berlin thinks that it was THIS GROUP that saw the 'early beginnigns' of a new form of doing philosophy. But Ayer and Austin never got on well together, and after the war they seldom say 'hello' to each other (or 'goodbye' for that matter). (It's true that Ayer had moved to London, so there was less of an occasion for such pleasantries).

Grice basically played football.


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He became the football captain at Corpus Christi. And in his spare time, he edited the philosophy undergraduate journal, unimaginatively called, "The Pelican".

"This was an unpretentious sort of journal,
and I would type the stuff. Only I don't type,
so I would JUST do it, but never did."

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He had tutorials with Hardie, who irritated him. A fellow tutee was one day off from one of his tutorials with a complain that he confided on Grice. "The man had me waiting ten long minutes, I promise, for a reply. And all he could say is, "And what do you mean by 'of'?"

Hardie is now forgotten unless by those who won't forget.

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Grice left Corpus Christi with Lit. Hum. first cum laude BA -- turned to MA, and he was elected as Hammondsworth Research Scholar for a year at Merton. His fellow research scholar was Steve Watson, whose sister Grice married --. They met at Steve Watson's wedding where Grice served as first man. But this was AFTER the war, or rather during. Steve Watson's first man (the original one) had been, alas, killed by the Hun, so Grice volunteered. But the Merton scholarship is pre-war alright.

He wrote one paper on Plato and the problem of negation. He signed in "Grice, Harborne", and it's, for a change, typed. We don't know who typed it. It's in the Grice Collection. By the look of it, it seems like a Pitman professional, only faster. It's a fascinating paper on "This is not green".

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Grice had to swallow his separation from his real adolescent. An Oxonian is, we know, a perpetual adolescence (phrase by Green, in "The Children of the Sun: A study of decadence in England"), but the corridors of power that Oxford signified for the 'nouveaux riche' Grice could not care for. He knew all he had to know about the Classics already, so he found Lit. Hum. boring --. He knew all he had to know about dissenting rationalism, after having to bear on his poor father, also called "Herbert", a nonconformist trying to conform his wife, who "had turned, for some reason, more and more of a High Churcher". The fact that Mabel Fenton-Grice (such was Grice's mom) had a sister who was a Catholic convert, and resident spinster at Harborne, did not help.

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At Clifton he had played the piano. Of course cricket, but that's MANDATORY. Piano was a relaxation and Clifton used him for every recital, including a memorable one where he 'murdered' as he would NOT say Ravel's "Pavane". The piano thing came from his papa, who had turned onto a 'concert violinist' after his business with some 'concoction' of some 'mechanical nature' which had been of some use during the Great War proved to be not so in the aftermath. The fact that Grice's brother, Derek, played the cello, helped.

"It brougth some harmony to the proceedings", he would recall. They would play the classy stuff. None of the "Bill Bailey" rags that were sweeping London at the time. He couldn't stand a syncopation.

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