Leeds Studies in English

Article:

Ralph W. V. Elliott, 'Peter Meredith in ', Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998), 5-6

Permanent URL: https://ludos.leeds.ac.uk:443/R/-?func=dbin-jump- full&object_id=124892&silo_library=GEN01

Leeds Studies in English School of English University of Leeds http://www.leeds.ac.uk/lse Peter Meredith in Australia

Ralph Elliott

It all began on a coach somewhere between Leeds and Bradford during a conference in the late 1950s. The man sitting next to me turned out to be an Australian, Colin Home, recently appointed Jury Professor of English Language and Literature in the , . I was then a Lecturer at the University College of North Staffordshire at Keele, and it was there that I first met Peter Meredith. The outcome of my meeting with Professor Home was that I agreed to move to Adelaide University in 1959 to inaugurate courses in Old and Middle English language and literature. Two years later, in September 1961, Peter Meredith was likewise persuaded to join the Adelaide English Department as a Lecturer to help teach the burgeoning medieval courses. With him came his equally adventurous wife Greta. Before long we were living in adjacent houses in the southern Adelaide suburb of St Mary's. A gate was put into the dividing jarrah fence, and a warm friendship developed between the Elliotts and the growing Meredith family next door, a friendship that has continued unbroken for forty years. The University of Adelaide was founded in 1874, its English Department coming of age, as it were, with the establishment of the Jury Chair in 1922. The first incumbent was Professor (later Sir) Archibald Strong, whose interests included Beowulf and repertory theatre, both prophetic of things to come. Among his successors were two distinguished academics, both of whom came to the Jury Chair from lectureships at Leeds: J. I. M. Stewart, then aged 23, and Alexander Norman (Derry) Jeffares, who was 31. Stewart's early 'Michael Innes' fiction, 'written entirely before breakfast', as he told the Registrar, reflects many of the oddities he saw around him in what was then a not very inspiring provincial city, where during the war years the only place where you could get a passable meal was the railway station restaurant a few minutes' walk from the University. Stewart returned to Britain in 1946, Derry Jeffares as Professor of English to Leeds in 1956. Five years later Peter Meredith joined the steadily expanding English Department under the benevolent headship of Professor Home, was promoted to a Senior Lectureship, and spent a year's study leave in 1967 renewing his personal association with medieval . He was a most inspiring teacher and is remembered with affection by the 1960s generation of Adelaide English students. But not only in the classroom was his Ralph Elliott presence felt. Beyond his academic duties Peter devoted himself enthusiastically to a variety of theatrical undertakings, as actor, producer, and even playwright. He acted in a performance of Shakespeare's Henry TV, produced by another member of the English Department, Dr Alan Brissenden, and, being possessed of a fine voice, sang in a production of Princess Ida. One of his most memorable appearances was as the servant Hodge in that 'Ryght Pithy, Pleasaunt and merie Comedie' Gammer Gurton's Needle, which so delighted one spectator that he affixed the name HODGE to Peter Meredith's English Department office door. Peter's stagings of medieval plays have become the stuff of legend. I shall never forget the privilege of being one of the devils, shouting:

'Helpe Belsabub, to bynde her boyes; Such harrowe was never are herde in helle!' in Peter's production of The Harrowing of Hell from one of the cycle plays. Some years later one of the fruits of Peter Meredith's enthusiasm for medieval drama was the staging of The Castle of Perseverance within the English Department of the University of Sydney by a former Adelaide student. Although a devoted husband and father, Peter was always willing to give up a precious weekend to take part in our English honours camps at a remote camp site in the Adelaide Hills called Shady Grove. As most of our students at that time lived with their families and were expected home for dinner every evening, the 'Shady Weekends', as they were affectionately known, proved a popular and highly successful method of creating informal gatherings of senior undergraduates in a stimulating intellectual atmosphere away from home. Here plays were read, poems recited, ghost stories told, and lively discussions on literary topics followed by midnight walks through the surrounding bush. To reassure parents and families, these were invited to visit for a couple of hours on Sunday to satisfy themselves that their offspring were safe and well. The links forged between Adelaide and Leeds by J. I. M. Stewart and Derry Jeffares were further strengthened by Peter Meredith's own interludium in Australia from 1961 to 1969, and, if I may add a personal note, by my Adelaide-born daughter Hilary and the Workshop Theatre, where she gained her MA in 1993. It is, I believe, not too much to claim that it was during his years in Adelaide that the seeds were truly sown for the many dramatic presentations and the scholarly achievements which have marked Peter Meredith's distinguished career since he took up his appointment at Leeds, right up to the Leeds production of Mankind in June 1996 and beyond.

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