December 1, 2005
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Campion’s Day
Today is the feast of the Catholic saint Edmund Campion. Campion, a Jesuit with a graceful prose style,
would perhaps not be too deeply offended by the fact that his surname
is now best known in some circles as that of a fictional character– the “Albert
Campion” of Margery Allingham‘s detective stories.The following is from a web page devoted to Allingham’s fiction, Roger Johnson’s “Thoughts on Mr. Campion and His Family.”
“Campion” may be a family name.
At any rate, several explanations have been offered for it. Jack
Morpurgo notes that it was her husband Philip, drawing on the
history of his own school, “who suggested for Marge’s
hero his pseudonymic surname. (The Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion,
is the most surprising alumnus of Christ’s Hospital, a determinedly
Protestant foundation.)”
This is not of course to say that Albert Campion’s
family are Roman Catholics: indeed, all the evidence is that
they are Church of England. However, the fact does suggest a
couple of interesting minor parallels with Mr Rudolph K–.
St. Edmund Campion necessarily spent most of his mission in England
incognito. And, perhaps more pertinently, the campion is a small
hardy English wild flower – like the scarlet pimpernel, in fact.
And the younger Albert Campion is strongly in the tradition of
the apparently effete aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney, who achieved
fame as the dashing hero known as the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Richard Martin says that the name is “a
barely disguised sign,” being the old French word for “champion.”The non-fictional St. Edmund Campion is of course remembered also, for instance in the names of Campion College in suburban Sydney, of Campion College at the University of Regina and of Campion Hall at the University of Oxford.
