C. K. OGDEN : A Collective Memoir

    by
    J. R. L. Anderson
    William Empson
    P. Sargant Florence
    Elsie Graham
    Martin and Eva Kolinsky      		 Joseph Lauwerys
    I. A. Richards
    Dora Russell
    Marjorie Todd
    Lord Zuckerman
    Edited by
    P. Sargant Florence
    Emeritus Professor, University of Birmingham
    and
     J. R. L. Anderson
    sometime deputy editor of the Guardian

    ELEK PEMBERTOM , London, 1977
    ISBN 0301 76061 6
      Contents
      Notes on Contributors vii
      Illustrations viii
      PART A :INTRODUCTORY1
      Preface and Acknowledgements   P. S. Florence2
      Chronology4
      Forward   J.R. L. Anderson7
      PART B : OGDEN AS EDITOR AND POLYMATH12
      Cambridge 1909-1919 and its Aftermath   P. Sargant Florence13
      A Voice of Reason in the First World War   Martin and Eva Kolinsky56
      "My Friend Ogden"   Dora Russell82
      Co-Author of the "Meaning of Meaning"     I. A. Richards96
      An Improbable Friendship   Marjory Todd110
      Talent Scout and Editor   Lord Zuckerman122
      PART C : THE INVENTION OF BASIC ENGLISH133
      Basic English and Its Value for Science   Elsie Graham135
      Basic English for the Social Sciences     P. Sargant Florence143
      Basic English as an International Language     Elsie Graham153
      Basic English -- its Position and Plans   J. A. Lauwerys161
      Basic English in Literature   William Empson169
      Basic English Today, A Postscript   Norman Pritchard174
      PART D : EXAMPLES OF BASIC ENGLISH177
      The Tower of Babel (Genesis II, 1-9), the Bible in Basic English177
      The Gettysburg Address,   Abraham Lincoln180
      A Page from the General Basic English Dictionary181
      First Page of the Basic Science Dictionary     Elsie Graham177
      Complete List of Basic Words and Rules     C. K. Ogden184
      PART E : C. K. OGDEN AS AUTHOR187
      Fecundity versus Civilization
          C. K. Ogden (alias Adelyne More) (three opening pages)      		189
      Review of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Supplementary Volumes, 1926
          C. K. Ogden      		192
      Counter-Offensive (with P.S.F. Introduction)       C. K. Ogden213
      and I A. Richards' Commentary226
      PART F : C. K. OGDEN : A PLEA FOR REASSESSMENT     J. L. R. Anderson231
      Appendix245

    NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

    J. R. L. Anderson. Sometime deputy editor of the Guardian. Author of The Ulysses Factor, etc.

    William Empson. Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, Author of Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1930, The Structure of Complete Words, 1951.

    P. Sargant Florence. Emeritus Professor, University of Birmingham. Author of Logic of British and American Industry, etc.

    Elsie Graham. Editor, The Science Dictionary in Basic English.

    Eva W. Kolinsky. Lecturer in German Politics, University of Birmingham.

    Martin Kolinsky. Lecturer in Political Science, University of Birmingham.

    Joseph Lauwerys. Director of the Atlantic Institute of Education, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

    I. A. Richards, Co-author with Ogden of Meaning of Meaning. Sometime Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Author of Principles of Literary Criticism. Emeritus Professor, Harvard University.

    Dora Russell. Author of Hypatia, The Right to be Happy, In Defence of Children, The Tamarisk Tree. Sometime Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge.

    Marjory Todd. Author of Snakes and Ladders in which C.K.O. figures, and Ever Such as Nice Lady.

    Lord Zuckrman. Author of the Social Life of Monkeys and Apes. Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, 1964-71.

    ILLUSTRATIONS
    (between pages 152 and 153)

    C. K. Ogden, a Portrait by James Wood

    Ogden from Picture Post

    Ogden's Counter-Offensive

    PART A. INTRODUCTORY

    PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

        Before we forget -- or die -- several of Ogden's still surviving friends and admirers, happily joined by J. R. L. Anderson, thought to preserve his memory by each telling what we could remember about him. Of he group, I knew him longest -- indeed from his undergraduate years -- and have been asked to write a brief preface. Such a general introduction is needed because each of us writes of a different period of time, and no one of us really knew him and his activities continuously. There are gaps in the narrative which the chronology printed on pp. 4-6 clearly indicates. Moreover, Ogden, as all of us testify, was peculiar in keeping his friends in separate compartments ; and some surviving friends should be acknowledged in a preface who have not felt able to write a chapter but have supplied valuable notes. Among these are : Mrs. Dorothy Gates, Ogden's secretary for many years who was with him at the end ; Miss Leonora Lockhart, now Mrs. Hannay, one of the chief translators into Basic English ; Mark Harmon of the Orthological Institute ; Fredric Warburg, quoted in Marjory Todd's contribution ; Leonard Elmhirst ; Rupert Crawshay-Williams ; James Wood ; and Frank Ogden. We are most grateful to Messrs Routledge & Kegan Paul, who have supplied lists of books edited by Ogden.
        The order in which the contributions to this Memoir are printed is, as strictly as possible, chronological. My own work refers to undergraduate days before the First World War, starting in 1909 but following Cambridge threads to 1929. Dr. and Mrs Kolinsky cove the war period and the Treaty of Versailles with its implications. Dora Russell's chapter relates to the immediate post-war period, and I A. Richards's to the collaboration in writing the Meaning of Meaning, published in 1922. Marjory Todd deals with Ogden after he moved to London, and Lord Zuckerman with Ogden's editing of the famous series of books for Kegan Paul begun in 1922 and continued for thirty years.
        Subsequent chapters take up aspects of the Basic English which Ogden developed after 1929, and examples of translations into Basic, and from some of Ogden's own publications, and J. R. L. Anderson writes a general assessment of his work.

    P. Sargant Florence

    CHRONOLOGY

    Born June 1st 1889Father : C. B. Ogden, a housemaster at Rossal. Head of Modern side. Mother : nee Fanny Hall
    1905-6"Good at everything" -- School, Games, Piano, Chess, etc. Contracts rheumatic fever and bedridden in dark room at 16, but illness arrested by Dr. Armstrong of Buxton, his preparatory school doctor.
    1908-9Classics Scholarship at Magdalene College, Cambridge, First Class Part I of Tripos
    1909 Founds Heretics Society with Pittiotto and other "Paulines". C. K. Honorary Secretary.
    1910Billiards Half-Blue. Moves from Pepysian building, Magdalene College to "Top Hole" Falcon Yard, Cambridge. Pittiotto retires; C. K. becomes President of Heretics.
    1912Cambridge Magazine, first number January 20. Published and financed by Stephen Swift Co.
    1913, JanPublishing house fails. Finance raised by L5 from each of twenty don or undergraduate friends of C.K.
    1913 JulyEnquiry into German Continuation Schools with Mr. R. H. Best
    1915-1920
         		Cambridge Magazine (continued weekly with Summary of Foreign Press, translating continental, including German, anti-war articles.) Writes 1915 Militarism vs. Feminism ; Fecundity vs Civilisation (as "Adelyne More").
    1920Cambridge Magazine as a quarterly : Summer 1920, Jan-March 1921; Decennial 1912-21, Double Number 1923.
    1920-27
         		Editing Psyche (1920-31). Writes Foundations of Aesthetics with I. A. Richards and James Wood (1921); The Meaning of Meaning with I. A. Richards (1922)
    Settles in Soho and Bloombury; joins the 1917 Club. Organizes the Orthological Institute. Spends Summers at Cap'Antibes.
    1921 Onward
     
         		Assumed editorship of the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method and in November 1921, takes up with Bertrand Russell to the question of publishing in that series as English translation of Wittgenstein's Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung in Ostwald's Annalen des Natrphilosophie. This appears (partly at G.E. Moore's suggestion) under the title Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The translation was partly the work of Frank Ramsey.* Edits (1) History of Civilisation series; (2) Today and Tomorrow Series; (3) Psyche Miniatures.
    1926-7First visit to the United States. Editorship of Forum.
    1928Writes ABC of Psychology (published 1929)
    1928 OnwardWrites Basic English Text Books : ABC of Basic English (1928), Basic by Examples (1928).
    (1931)Basic English
    Debabelization.
    (1932)
     
     
     
         		Basic English Applied (Science)
    The Basic Words. A detailed account of their uses.
    Basic English versus the Artificial Languages, . . .
    Opposition. A Linguistic and Psychological analysis
    Basic Step by Step.
    The Basic Teacher.
    Brighter Basic.
    1932Second visit to the United States
    Writes Jeremy Bentham 1832-2932 (in Basic)
    1935Elected to Atenaeum Club
    1939-44Resides in Buxton
    1942Basic for Science (takes place of Basic English Applied and gives examples in Basic).
    1954Book collection sold to University College, London.
    1956Moves from Bloomsbury to house in Cadogan Square.
    Mar 1957Dies, London Clinic, of cancer

    FORWARD
    J. R. L. Anderson

        In 1970 I completed a work that had exercised my mind for some years, a study of physical individualism in man, manifested in the exploits of Francis Chichester, H. W. Tilman, and others who have sought the challenge of physical adventure by remote and lonely paths.* In pursuing my thoughts here I was led to reflect on the related quality of intellectual individualism and the impetus that drives men to adventure beyond philosophical horizons, to discover new worlds of reason (or unreason, for that matter). Intellectual adventure is at once better and worse chronicled than physical adventure ; better, in that whole edifices of learning have been built on the thoughts of Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Newton, and their peers ; worse, in that physical adventure has more readily comprehensible surroundings to relate it to time, place and the adventurer himself. If a man has to extricate himself from a crevasse, you know, in a sense, what he has to do ; if he has a mental chasm to cross, you can seldom know precisely how he contrives to bridge it. Yet it is just these bridges over mental chasms which have extended the frontiers of human understanding. Why do some men want -- need -- feel driven -- to bridge such chasms ?
        Reflecting on this, I found myself thinking a good deal of C. K. Ogden, a man whose life seemed to epitomise intellectual adventure, and near enough to my own time to have a comprehensible social setting. I never knew Ogden, but I knew something of his work and of his range of intellectual curiosity. And it so happened that his brother, F. K. Ogden, was a fellow-member of my Club in London, and we would meet there from time to time. One evening I asked him whether there was any biography or critical study of his brother, because I knew of none, yet felt that there ought, surely, to be such a work. On learning that there was not, I decided that I should like very much to try to write one myself.
        I ran into unsuspected difficulties. The range of C. K. Ogden's interests was so enormous that it soon became apparent that I would need something like ten years of whole-time research to collect material for a satisfactory biography ; and my own circumstances did not permit this concentration of effort to the exclusion of other work. I could not contemplate a hurried, slapdash biography -- that could have meaning neither for me nor for anybody else. I began to feel that I should have to abandon the project.
        Then I had a letter from Christopher Macy, of the Pemberton Publishing Company. He had heard, he wrote, of my projected biography, and wished to let me know that his firm was contemplating publication of a memoir of C. K. Ogden, compiled by Professor P. Sargant Florence ; could his team help my one-man band in any way ? I wrote back at once to say that for various reasons my biography was likely to be a non-starter, but that I remained deeply interested in Ogden, and that if such help as I could give was likely to be of any use to Sargant Florence I should be delighted to provide it. The upshot is this book.
        I should make clear at once that my knowledge of Ogden is marginal compared with the lifelong friendship and understanding of the man presented by Sargant Florence and the other contributors ; so much so that at times I have felt it almost an impertinence for me to be associated with them. My apologia, however, is this : in human eyesight peripheral vision is important to see things whole, and I can at least provide a peripheral, even an eccentric, approach to Ogden, derived from my own interests, which is not out of keeping with his own unusual approach to life. I do not pretend that this adds much to knowledge of Ogden ; I hope that it may contribute a little towards seeing him whole. And as a very junior partner in the editorship I have been able to undertake some of the chores which go into the making of a book.
        A memoir is not a biography -- that needs to be understood. and this book is precisely what it claims to be, a collection of memorials on different aspects of Ogden's life and work. It cannot be complete, in the sense that a definitive biography attempts completeness. but one book is not necessarily the worse for not being another book of a different kind ; a memoir is not a biography, and precisely because it is not it may offer insights, illuminations of quirks of thought or character here and there, that would not emerge in a more formal study of a man's life. For reasons which will appear in our text, Ogden's towering contribution to the thought of the twentieth century has been strangely neglected ; or rather, he has not been given credit for his contributions. Our hope is that this memoir will quicken interest in him, and lead to proper recognition of his importance as an intellectual adventurer
      -----
      * The Ulysses Factor (1970, London : Hodder & Stoughton ; New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).
    .

    contents     part B