Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction: Edward J. Dent – Another Kind of Genius
- 1 The Ribston Pippin 1876–1895
- 2 The Bumptious Undergraduate 1895–1899
- 3 The Accidental Scholar 1899–1901
- 4 The Travelling Fellow 1902–1906
- 5 The Wanderer 1906–1907
- 6 The New Spirit 1907–1910
- 7 The Impresario 1910–1914
- 8 The Pacifist 1914–1918
- 9 The Journalist 1919–1922
- 10 The International Musician 1922–1926
- 11 The Professor 1926–1931
- 12 The Juggler 1931–1934
- 13 The Beleaguered Diplomat 1935–1936
- 14 The Colonial Doctor 1936–1939
- 15 Titurel 1939–1945
- 16 Tityvillus 1946–1957
- Afterword
- Appendix: Dent’s Ulcer
- Select Bibliography
- Index
15 - Titurel 1939–1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction: Edward J. Dent – Another Kind of Genius
- 1 The Ribston Pippin 1876–1895
- 2 The Bumptious Undergraduate 1895–1899
- 3 The Accidental Scholar 1899–1901
- 4 The Travelling Fellow 1902–1906
- 5 The Wanderer 1906–1907
- 6 The New Spirit 1907–1910
- 7 The Impresario 1910–1914
- 8 The Pacifist 1914–1918
- 9 The Journalist 1919–1922
- 10 The International Musician 1922–1926
- 11 The Professor 1926–1931
- 12 The Juggler 1931–1934
- 13 The Beleaguered Diplomat 1935–1936
- 14 The Colonial Doctor 1936–1939
- 15 Titurel 1939–1945
- 16 Tityvillus 1946–1957
- Afterword
- Appendix: Dent’s Ulcer
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I feel rather like Titurel in Parsifal: he lies in his coffin & asks for a drink now & then but nobody takes any notice of him.
1939–1943
For the first year of war, Dent was forcibly laid up in Cambridge, which in many ways suited him, a rare opportunity for undisturbed writing and research. But he had to be reminded to keep still. His ulcer had caught up with him again in November 1939, when on a trip down to London, he suddenly haemorrhaged badly: ‘must have bled nearly to death; I certainly felt that I had got nothing left but a sense of humour!’ After a hasty operation he recuperated at New Quebec Street, looked after by one of his German refugees, the dancer Heinz Lander, also a trained nurse, then returning to Cambridge to convalesce at the Evelyn Nursing Home. In spite of a night nurse who liked to give her captive audience ghoulish tales of previous patients, he gradually recovered, by January feeling well enough to move back into Panton Street, his ulcer reduced to a ‘tiny spot’, and extreme caution advised to obviate future flare-ups. For years this was to be another life pattern: haemorrhage, treatment, convalescence, then an excessive burst of activity which set it all off again.
Once again, war had changed everything. On his return from the USA that September, Dent had been ‘horrified’ to find London silent, in darkness, the theatres closed. ‘I suppose it is good for the population to get accustomed to air-raid conditions a good long time before they begin.’ At Panton Street he found that two ‘females’, schoolteachers from St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, had been billeted; some four thousand evacuees were now in the town and needing places to live. Exhausted, his stomach already giving him pain again, he needed his house to himself. But Hills, ‘in one of her moods’, made it very clear that she liked the two schoolteachers, who helped her around the house and were good company. He gave in: ‘I was given a very good dinner to-night, probably as a sop to Cerberus.’ Cambridge had responded to war quickly and efficiently.
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- Edward J. DentA Life of Words and Music, pp. 464 - 498Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023