Obituary: Canon E. L. Mascall

WHEN I went up to Christ Church, Oxford, my rooms in Tom Quad were near those occupied by Eric Mascall, as Chaplain, writes Sasha Hoghton (further to the obituary by Professor John Macquarrie, 17 February). He was one of three great eccentrics who lived in Tom: the others were 'D' Dundas, one's 'moral tutor', and Canon Claude Jenkins, who wore a square-cut frock coat and shovel hat and did indeed smoke beech leaves from the Malvern hills (not the Meadow), mixed with old cigar butts from the SCR. Of the three, Eric Mascall had the sharpest intellect, but was so painfully shy that most undergraduates gave up all efforts to communicate after the initial embarrassing glass of warm sherry.

However, I and other ecclesiastically inclined men came to know him better through the John Fell Society, which met in his rooms to hear papers (I recall WH Auden's address). We discovered, beneath the apparent cold, ascetic front, a priest of great humour, charm and compassion. May the halls of heaven welcome him as he welcomed, instructed and amused these callow undergraduates at 'the House'.