The trivial arrangement documented in the postcard sent by G. E. M. Anscombe to M. S. Lourenço (1936-2009), which is reproduced and transcribed below, may give the impression of contrasting with the anecdoctal vividness of how the latter recollected the author of An introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. According to what he says in his last interview, Lourenço was introduced to Miss Anscombe by Michael Dummett (who had been appointed as his supervisor in February 3 1966) in a session at the Newman Society. She produced a lasting impression on him because of her intimidating superiority, sincere and intelligent eyes, not to mention her habit of smoking cigarillos.

Apart from their common interest in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, Miss Anscombe and Lourenço were committed Catholics partial to Dominican thought. At the time of this postcard, Miss Anscombe was 47: 20 years earlier, she had come back to Oxford as a research fellow at Sommerville College, where she would remain until 1970, on occasion of her appointment to the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. In turn, Lourenço was 30: having finished in 1964, at the University of Lisbon, his BA thesis on a number of Wittgensteinian concepts, he applied that year for a Gulbenkian scholarship to study with Kurt Reidemeister, in Göttingen. Because his viva had taken place after the submission deadline, this application could not be formally accepted. The following year he made a new, this time successful, application to study at the University of Oxford with Peter Frederick Strawson. After an admission interview conducted by Strawson, Gilbert Ryle and Michael Dummett, Lourenço was accepted as Advanced Student and registered at Linacre College.

In the end of October 1966 Lourenço had moved to Flat 114, Summertown House, 369 Banbury Road, circa 2.2 miles and a 43-minute walk from there to Miss Anscombe’s house, where, as is known, Wittgenstein had lived for a short period in 1951 and incidentally the very same place where Francis Warner, with whom Lourenço studied literature at Oxford, was living. It was in a dimly lighted study in this house, in private tuition with Miss Anscombe, that Lourenço came to understand, so he says, the major works by Wittgenstein, namely the Tractatus.