Iris Murdoch (1919–99) was—unlike most modern
writers—intelligent, nice, and good.
Her physical beauty
seemed to reflect the inward beauty of her soul. In person, she
was observant, responsive, and acute, as well as serene and
the mistress of herself. She had a great deal of love to give and
was loving to the world in general. Born in Dublin, she was educated by high-minded bohemians at
Badminton School, near Bristol. The influential headmistress
shared a bedroom in Iris’s dormitory with another woman, but was
also a “moral guide” who discouraged intimate friendships among
her girls. Nonetheless, she gave an imprimatur to Iris’s lifelong propensity
for lesbian affairs with various butch types, including her best friend and
an unnamed temptress who threatened her marriage.
In 1938, at Oxford, where she earned a first-class degree in
classics, Iris joined the Communist Party to express her
solidarity with sufferers. Even someone as bright as Iris could,
by adhering to the party line (which could suddenly change, as
Orwell observed, while one went to the bathroom during a
meeting), remain blind to political reality after the purge
trials, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the Russian invasion of Finland.
Cold baths and irregular Greek verbs prepared her to become a
junior civil servant at the wartime treasury. Once there, still
full of misguided idealism, she passed information about her work
to the Communists. She later said the party had “taught her from
the inside how a small, ruthless group of individuals can wield
destructive