Charles Badham - Late Life and Legacy

Late Life and Legacy

Badham was given a banquet at the town hall, Sydney, in August 1883 to celebrate the completion of his seventieth year, and though his health was then beginning to fail, one of the youngest of those present afterwards recorded that "Badham's speech was unforgettable". On 1 September 1883, in a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, Badham suggested for the first time that evening lectures should be established at the university. He had been ailing all the year and in December became very ill. He died on 27 February 1884, almost his last act being the writing of a farewell letter in Latin to his old friend CG Cobet. He was married twice and left a widow, four sons and four daughters. A selection from his Speeches and Lectures was published at Sydney in 1890, and there is a bursary in his memory at the university. At his funeral the coffin was carried to the grave by former students who had received the bursaries for which he had worked so hard, it was they who subscribed for the monument over his grave, severely simple as he would have desired.

Dr Badham's classical attainments were recognized by the most famous European critics, such as CG Cobet, Ludwig Preller, W Dindorf, FW Schneidewin, JAF Meineke, A Ritschl and Tischendorf; and in Australia, Sir James Martin, William Forster and Sir William Macleay. Like many schoolmasters who are good scholars and even good teachers, he was not a professional success; and his personality may have stood in the way of his advancement. He remains virtually unknown in the United Kingdom.

Badham published editions of Euripides, Helena and Iphigenia in Tauris (1851), Ion (1851); Plato's Philebus (1855, 1878); Laches and Eutzydemus (1865), Phaedrus (1851), Symposium (1866) and De Platonis Epistolis (1866). He also contributed to classical periodicals such as Mnemosyne. His Adhortatio ad Discipulos Academiae Sydniensis (1869) contains a number of emendations of Thucydides and other classical authors. Badham also published some critiques of Shakespeare. A collected edition of his Speeches and Lectures delivered in Australia (Sydney, 1890) contains a memoir by Thomas Butler.