The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life 1st Edition
by W.C. Lubenow
Queer Places:
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
Cambridge City Crematorium, Huntingdon Rd, Cambridge CB3 0JJ, United Kingdom
James Duff Duff (November 20, 1860 – April 25, 1940), known as J. D. Duff, was a Scottish classical scholar, eminent Latinist, and translator of Russian literature.
Born in Turriff, Aberdeenshire, he was the third son of Lieutenant-Colonel James Duff, a retired army officer, and Jane Bracken Dunlop Duff. He and his twin brother Alan were among the first boys to attend Fettes College in Edinburgh. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a scholar in 1878, won the Porson Prize in 1881, and graduated with a First Class in the Classical Tripos in 1882. He was elected a Classical Fellow of Trinity in 1883, a post and community where he spent the rest of his life teaching Latin and Greek alongside Girton College.
Duff is best known to classical scholars for his unpretending school edition of Juvenal, praised by A.E. Housman, as well as his work on other Silver Latin writers. Over the age of forty, he self-taught Russian to read Tolstoy and Turgenev in their original language, subsequently publishing various translations of works by authors such as Lermontov, Aksakov, and Tolstoy. Though he never visited Russia, he maintained a correspondence with Russian friends in their native language, including Alexandra Grigorievna Pashkova.
Duff was a member of the Cambridge Apostles. The Apostles society historically held significance for the GLBTQ cultural landscape through its environment of frank discussions on homoeroticism and exploration of Platonic love as a counterdiscourse to strict Victorian ideologies. His involvement linked him to a network of intellectual peers within the society, some of whom—such as Henry Babington Smith and Arthur Hugh Clough—personally supported him during a severe nervous collapse following his initial marriage proposal to Laura Eleanor Lenox-Conyngham in 1890. Duff and Laura eventually married on December 28, 1895, and had five children: Alan Colquhoun, Sir James Fitzjames, Patrick William, Mary Geraldine, and Hester Laura Elisabeth. Duff passed away at the age of 79 at his home in Cambridge and was cremated at the Cambridge City Crematorium.
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The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life 1st Edition by W.C. Lubenow |
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