During the course of some research for my forthcoming book on Lionel Johnson, I came across Spooner’s entry in the new Dictionary of National Biography.

The Reverend William Archibald Spooner – who was warden of New College in Johnson’s time, and one of whose daughters married Johnson’s best friend – is, of course, best remembered for the Spoonerism, a verbal confusion to which he was supposed to be peculiarly prone. Amongst the classic utterances ascribed to him are (announcing the hymn in a New College Chapel sevice) “Kinquering kongs their titles take”; “You have hissed my mystery lectures; you have tasted a whole worm; you must leave at once by the town drain”; “Who has not nourished in his bosom a half-warmed fish?” and “Our Lord is a shoving leopard.”

Alas! few of these appear to be authentic. On the other hand, the D.N.B. is more favourably disposed to evidence for a number of “physical Spoonerisms” so to speak: “on one occasion he spilt salt on the table-cloth and poured claret on top of it, and on another he remarked on the darkness of a staircase before turning off all the lights and attempting to lead a party down the stairs in the dark.” He is also credited with a salty wit: “I see your book has filled a much needed gap.”

However, the following anecdote is what most impressed me, both as the original of a celebrated scene in Good Bye Mr. Chips, and, more significantly as an illustration of the magnanimity characteristic of the old Oxford tradition at its best:

“His wardenship was, however, marked by an act of considerable moral courage. In the First World War, New College had more old members killed in action than any other Oxford college. Against opposition Spooner insisted that the German dead were to be remembered on the war memorial erected in the college chapel, alongside the allied dead. His view prevailed.”