3 .sx Oxford Days .sx Bernard Berenson described visiting Ned Warren just a few months after Ned had completed A Tale of Pausanian Love .sx Ned lived at 31 Holywell Street which was just across from New College .sx They had been together in Paris in the autumn of 1887 and had roamed the galleries together .sx Berenson was introduced to the literary lights among the students and commented that nothing equalled Oxford and the men he looked upon :sx " Take your best and imagine it more refined , more intellectual , saner and you have the English youth I meet .sx " Berenson's interest in the male charms of Oxford was , however , quite different from that of his friend Ned , and , in time , he objected to what he and his wife referred to as " the Brotherhood of Sodomites " .sx B.B. boasted that at the time he made " homosexuals' mouths water " .sx He also appeared to be pleased that while at Oxford he went out with a new acquaintance every afternoon .sx A dozen years later , Berenson reflected on his brushes with sexual deviation , and though he admitted " a delight in the beauty of the male that can seldom have been surpassed , and with an almost unfortunate attractiveness for other men " , he was categorical in that " I have not only never yielded to any temptations but have deliberately not allowed temptations to come near " .sx According to his biographer , Meryle Secrest , Berenson had a " sqeamish dislike of what he would have considered a sexual abnormality , as well as his fear of guilt by association " .sx Secrest says that homosexuality never attracted Berenson , and his infatuations with attractive young women later in his life were well known .sx However , Kenneth Clark maintained that he was always terrified that people would accuse him of sodomy .sx Nothing could be more damaging to his career .sx There was no doubt about the proclivities of Lionel Johnson who was a friend of Warren and Berenson's .sx Johnson was seven years younger than Warren and the son of Captain William Victor Johnson of Broadstairs in Kent .sx He said of himself that he was the only male member of his family who had not had military training , and his brief life was both brilliant and tragic .sx Lionel Johnson entered Winchester College when he was 13 and like Ned was attracted to a variety of religious expressions :sx Anglicanism , Buddhism and finally Catholicism .sx Santayana knew him well when he had rooms at New College , overlooking Holywell Street where Warren lived , and described him as " a little fellow , pale , with small sunken blinking eyes , a sensitive mouth , and lank pale brown hair .sx His childlike figure was crowned by a smooth head , like a large egg standing on its small end .sx " .sx Others were less generous .sx There are descriptions of Johnson with permed hair and wearing face powder as well as girlish shoes and blue silk stockings .sx He devoured books and while contemptuous of his fellows at college was at the same time enamoured by the beauty of some of them .sx Santayana said that Johnson lived on eggs in the morning and nothing but tea and cigarettes during the rest of the day .sx The tea was soon replaced by alcohol - a liking for which he apparently first acquired at Winchester where he drank eau de cologne to the amusement of his classmates .sx Johnson blamed his alcoholism on a doctor who once prescribed a glass of whisky before retiring to steady his nervous disposition .sx Towards the end of his life in order to " ensure the Bacchic haze that engulfed him from the world , " he was drinking two pints of whisky every twenty-four hours .sx According to one account , Johnson's death at 35 was brought on from a fractured skull he suffered from falling off a bar stool while eating a sandwich at the Green Dragon in London .sx Berenson and Warren shared with Johnson a passion for the writings of Walter Pater , the high priest of the Aesthetic Movement .sx Johnson became quite close to Pater and he was one of many young Oxford men who wished to model their lives on Marius the Epicurean , the last of Pater's works .sx Warren never directly acknowledged a debt to it , but Berenson's other biographer , Ernest Samuels , says :sx " It was probably Bernard's reading of Marius as much as any more prudential motive that led him .sx .. to take the first of his dramatic steps toward his ambition of perfect culture .sx " Today , the book appears indigestible with an impossible plot .sx It is the spiritual odyssey of a Roman youth who seeks " to meditate much on visible objects .sx .. on children at play in the morning , the trees in early spring , on young animals , on the fashions and amusements of young men ; to keep ever by him if it were but a single choice flower , a graceful animal , or a seashell as a token of the whole kingdom of such things " .sx Unfortunately for Berenson , Pater made himself unavailable for any t e-circ te- a-grave -t e-circ te , and Ned , not wishing to appear to be a devotee , made no effort to be admitted to Pater's lectures .sx That not withstanding , both Berenson and Warren were charged by his thinking and Pater's Marius was passed among most of their closest associates .sx It was a bond which also united them to Oscar Wilde .sx Johnson was a more direct link to Wilde for Berenson .sx At Winchester College , Lionel Johnson had come to know his cousin Lord Alfred Douglas better and it was Johnson who introduced Douglas to Wilde , a momentous act to say the least .sx The introduction was later to have a great effect upon Johnson who came to dislike Wilde .sx Secretly he dedicated his poem , The Destroyer of a Soul , to Wilde .sx It is strong venom .sx The opening line says :sx " I hate you with a necessary hate " , and goes on further to proclaim :sx " You , whom I cannot cease/ With pure and perfect hate to hate .sx .. " Nothing else is known of the circumstances of the poem .sx Berenson met Wilde at his house in Tite Street and enjoyed " immortal Oscar's outrageous wit " but , according to Ernest Samuels , he also " prudently resisted Wilde's advances " , an attitude which led Wilde to exclaim that Berenson was " completely without feeling " and " made of stone " .sx Berenson remained in touch with Wilde throughout the sensational trial of 1895 and afterwards during Wilde's imprisonment in Reading gaol .sx Despite John Fothergill's close relationship with Wilde , and the fact that Fothergill often referred to Warren's acquaintance with Wilde , Warren only mentioned Wilde once in his memoirs :sx when he saw Wilde in New York during a lecture tour .sx Similarly , Warren only wrote about Johnson in a detached manner .sx When he was writing The Beardsley Period , Osbert Burdett asked Warren to supply a sketch of Johnson .sx Warren concentrated on Johnson's love of controversy :sx " His points of opposition were well taken , but they were taken for the sake of opposition .sx .. When he had made , or was about to make , his submission to the Latin Church , he informed me that this action was 'wholly for purposes of controversy' .sx .. I liked Johnson .sx I thought him a good critic and a discriminating controversalist .sx I could not find that he revered truth .sx " .sx Johnson was not easy to know , as one of his few close friends , Frank Russell , related :sx " Friendship with Lionel Johnson in any ordinary personal sense was not an easy thing :sx he was aloof and detached and apt to suggest an Epicurean god rather than a human being .sx He didn't want to be like this ; he passionately loved his fellow creatures in theory , but he found it difficult in the flesh .sx " .sx There was more than a bit of Johnson in Warren , but Warren was too restrained to be in danger of going down the path of inner destruction .sx By the end of his brief life , Johnson had left an extraordinary body of literature :sx hundreds of poems evoking a remarkable transcendentalism .sx But as Santayana said :sx " Lionel Johnson lived only in his upper storey , in a loggia open to the sky ; and he forgot that he had climbed there up a long flight of flinty steps , and that his campanile rested on the vulgar earth .sx " .sx When only 20 , Johnson wrote a poem for Warren , Counsel .sx On one level he had certainly entered Warren's psyche :sx " Bring not to her Golden lore of poetry :sx Not on those dark eyes confer Glories of antiquity .sx What wouldest thou ?sx She loves too much , To feel the solemn touch of Plato's thought , that masters thee .sx " .sx In his memoirs , Maurice Bowra , the classical scholar who later became Warden of Wadham College , described the Classic course at Oxford which Warren would have experienced .sx Bowra said that it was " a survival from the past when the study of Latin and Greek were regarded as the base of all human education " .sx That is why its title was Lieterae Humaniores :sx Humane Letters .sx Bowra explained what was expected of young men at New College :sx For his first five terms a student works for Classical Moderations , or Mods , and this means that he studies Greek and Latin literature in breadth and depth .sx For the next seven terms he studies Greats , which is a combination of ancient history , both Greek and Latin , with philosophy , both ancient , that is Plato and Aristotle , and modern .sx It is thus an education in the study of classical antiquity in a full sense .sx .. [The student] must have enough command of the ancient languages to be able to read them in bulk Dan to know what the texts mean .sx .sx Ned was well prepared for this kind of study and his results in Greek and Latin Literature in the Trinity Term of 1885 were excellent .sx However , he only took a pass degree in 1888 and , according to the official Oxford record , that was " because his sight failed him after Moderations , the first set of University exams he took " .sx Other records refer to Ned's having a " physical breakdown " at this time .sx H.A.L. Fisher spoke of it in those terms and exclaimed that with the breakdown " all chance of a First in Greats and a Fellowship vanished " .sx Writing in the Bowdoin magazine , Charles Calhoun suggested a psychosomatic origin for this and Ned's other ailments .sx This view is supported by Sam and Cornelia's scepticism about Ned's claims of ill health .sx Whatever the situation , by 1887 Ned's daily reading was reduced to four and a half hours .sx In his memoirs , it is Ned's contention that there had been no reprieve from poor health between 1885 and 1894 .sx At Lewes House , Ned's health was continuously discussed .sx Mrs Kathleen Warner ( still alive in Lewes and once a kitchen maid at Lewes House ) says Warren suffered from pernicious anaemia and used to eat raw liver as a cure .sx On several occasions she remembers a local doctor aggravating his condition by applying leeches to Warren's neck .sx Warren wasn't the only one inclined towards hypochondria at Lewes House .sx So also was John Marshall - and his future wife , Mary Bliss .sx All three tried a variety of cures at continental spas .sx John Davidson Beazley , who catalogued the superlative Lewes House collection of ancient gems , was close to two other New College men who knew Warren :sx Maurice Bowra and Harold Acton .sx Beazley was devoted to Warren and tried hard to present his friend as much as possible as a serious scholar :sx " Warren loved ancient Greece ; and especially its earlier phase ; that athletic , aristocratic , and heroic age which became fully articulate , just at its close , in Pindar and Aeschylus , in Critius and Myron .sx He was an admirer of exact scholarship , and made light of his own attainments in that respect .sx " .sx Beazley was too much of a gentleman to reveal that Warren's endless translations of Greek and Latin verse and texts were consigned to oblivion , ending up in his dust-filled cupboard at Oxford , when he was Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology from 1925 to 1956 .sx Subsequent holders of the chair ( including Bernard Ashmole who was close to both Marshall and Warren ) , left them undisturbed in the same cupboard until , in the 1970s , Warren and Marshall's personal papers were moved to the librarian's office at the Ashmolean Museum .sx This is where I found them several years ago :sx uncatalogued , unpaginated and unread .sx