Title

Christopher Brennan, Esq. [by Lionel Lindsay].

Author

Author not identified

Source

[Not applicable]

Type

About the work

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

A portrait of the Australian author Christopher Brennan.
by Lionel Lindsay

“Ma tra noi moderni, esclusi comunemente da ogni a1tro cammino di celebrtà, quelli che si pongono per la via degli studi,mostrano nella elezione quella maggiore grandezza d'animo che oggi si puó mostrare.” - Leopardl.

It is not for me to attempt the measure of this great man who was my friend. Here I wish only to pay a tribute to one I greatly admired for himself, and to the rarest mind I have ever known.

I always revered Chris. Brennan; the profoundness of his learning, the delicacy of his perceptions stirred my admiration, but his idealism and his large humanity, his heavy wit and great simplicity of character, endeared him to my heart.

In him was compounded of peasant stock by some strange alchemy of Fate, not onlv the fine poet and matchless scholar but one of the few Universal minds Australia has mothered. His merits, his peculiar worth were known to his immediate contemporaries, but his Alma Mater never paid him his dues; a few lectures led to a belated Professorship and when at last the tragic circumstances of his life exposed him to the mercy of Puritanism he was dismissed.

I met him on the day of the event, at the opening of the Society of Artists’ Exhibition, and asked him if the news were true: “Yes,” he said, “I'm sacked.” Then with a grave smile he added, “Slain by the wooden sword of Jehovah Grundy!”

Brennan was a natural leader in that small world where thought and ideas count. To the Greek and vast memory of Porson, he added a wit somewhat attuned to that of Johnson, and his large presence made him a supreme head of the table at the Casuals Club. Like Belloc and Saintsbury he loved the good things of the table, and honoured the charms of wine, mistress of all good talk.

An Italian advocate once said to me: “This man is a wonder. All my life I have studied Dante, yet, after six months study of my language he not only knows Dante better, but he has cleared for me passages that had long confused me.”

I count it among the privileges of my life to have known Chris. Brennan intimately, and to have talked with him across many a bottle of good wine of things notable and contestable. He introduced me to much that mattered. He illumined so many labyrinths.

In his lifetime he was unequalled here for scholarship, and his death has not enlarged his contemporaries; for it is on1y the envy of Democracy which insists that the great are replaceable. As I left his graveside I could but remember the words uttered by Rodin at the burial of Mallarmé: “How long will it take Nature to fashion again such another masterpiece of mind ?”.

© Lionel Lindsay