OBITUARY : Bentley Bridgewater

Bentley Bridgewater was considered by many to be the incarnation of British Museum man: civilised, urbane, articulate, a member of the Athenaeum. Sir John Wolfenden admired him as a walking encyclopaedia of the museum, its personalities, history, traditions and mythologies which he related with almost continental fluency. Bridgewater spent his entire working life there, but for his wartime service at Bletchley Park, and was its Secretary for 25 years, from 1948 to 1973.

During his time fundamental changes took place - the British Museum Act, 1963, which changed the constitution of the body of trustees who had controlled the museum since its foundation in 1753; and the creation of the British Library in 1973.

For many years Bridgewater's tall, dark, distinguished, slightly portly, figure would be seen walking the museum's corridors, the streets of Bloomsbury (where he lived for 45 years) and the West and East Ends of London. He reminded the paleographer Francis Wormald, an early colleague, of a duchess in search of her quarterings.

There were many dimensions to Bridgewater's life other than the museum, and most of them were complicated. Outwardly he embodied the Establishment and maintained a position of unassailable respectability. But behind this facade his life moved in other quarters, bringing him into contact with many surprising elements of English society.

Bentley Bridgewater was born in Vancouver in 1911, the only son of Conyers Bridgewater, a barrister, and his wife, Violet, a daughter of Dr I.W. Powell of Victoria, British Columbia, after whom the Powell River is named. His father had gone there as a land speculator but his hopes were dashed by the Great War. Violet, a pianist and composer of songs such as "Fight, Canada, for Empire" and "The Maori's Dream of Home", brought Bentley to England on a troopship, where she embarrassed him by her enthusiasm for patriotic entertainment. She was to become a decisive, if baneful, figure in his life. From her he inherited a developed gift for music.

Bridgewater was a King's Scholar at Westminster School and a scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His greatest desire was to become a professional pianist but this ambition was discouraged by his mother. As a child she had thrown away his drumsticks. His parents lived in reduced circumstances in South Kensington, where they courageously kept up appearances. Violet's ambition for him was the diplomatic service and marriage to the daughter of a knight. Neither materialised. Instead, he joined the Secretary's Office of the British Museum in 1937 as an Assistant Keeper and was appointed Assistant Secretary in 1940.

Bridgewater's time at Bletchley Park was not only involved in codebreaking. It was there that he formed the closest friendship of his early manhood with Angus Wilson, the novelist, who at that time was a colleague in the British Museum Reading Room. It was a tempestuous relationship in which Bridgewater steered Wilson through a sequence of severe mental crises from which grew his gift as a writer of short stories. They remained lifelong friends. Bridgewater was a major source for Margaret Drabble's recent biography Angus Wilson (1995).

In 1946 he returned to the museum and was appointed Secretary in 1948. The post involved the substantial business of servicing the trustees and their committees with papers and keeping their minutes. He showed a close interest in all the departments and in the personal lives and careers of his colleagues. His farewell party in 1973 was a visible sign of the affection they felt for him.

Bridgewater was an unconventional administrator. Nothing was left undone, and his minute-taking was impeccable; but his working hours were irregular and he spent a great deal of time on the telephone. He would arrive at 10am, leave at 1pm, return to his flat in Bedford Square and sleep through the afternoon, return at 5pm, when the office staff were leaving, and work through until mid-evening. He would dine alone at the Athenaeum, or with a friend in a restaurant, and thereafter walk the streets of London in search of adventure until the early hours of the morning. Indiscretion probably cost him a knighthood.

Socially he moved conspicuously in the London museum world, was a regular habitue of the salon of Viva King in Thurloe Square, and occupied an essential place in the circle of Francis and Honoria Wormald. Unlike most of his friends he was neither a scholar nor a collector. He recognised the quality of an object or the success of a room but he exercised wilful anti-aestheticism in his own surroundings. For many months the sofa in his flat bore a notice, "Unsafe to sit on".

In music he was a critic of penetrating judgement. From youth his friends included Tom Goff, the harpsichord maker, and Ivor Newton, the accompanist. His lasting regret was the failure to make a life in music, but he lacked the force of application to do so, despite his gifts as a pianist.

Within the museum world Bridgewater was something of a snob. He knew to the finest shade of nuance the exact levels of English middle-class life; and his naturally cultivated voice, distinct and melodious, betrayed that he belonged to the right part of it. In his personal life he had a sympathetic gift for friendship and included people (mainly men) of all walks of life; but he was happiest with the upper and lower classes and looked glazed with the rest.

Bridgewater was a black and white character; he had few grey areas. One side was selfish, self-centred and dismissive; few had a greater propensity for schadenfreude; he rarely kept confidences. The other was generous to the point of self- sacrifice; he freely lent money to friends in need; was an unremitting hospital visitor; he never abandoned those who were down on their luck; he championed the underdog; he had great patience with personal difficulties; was a wonderful host who understood food and wine; and he was kind and attentive to the old.

He could infuriate as easily as he could charm. By doing so he sustained with courage and determination a long degenerative illness, mistakenly diagnosed as Parkinsonism. His final years were spent in his flat in Doughty Street where he was professionally looked after by Ian Mundy, who organised a splendid 80th birthday party at the Barbican Centre, accompanied him on foreign holidays and made his life more comfortable than it had been since he left home.

Anthony Symondson SJ

Bentley Powell Conyers Bridgewater, museum administrator: born Vancouver 6 September 1911; Secretary of the British Museum 1948-73; died London 17 February 1996.