OXFORD'S OPEN DAY, OPEN ARMS | 14 September 2018, Walking Tour

1. Jesus College on Turl Street flaunts its
 green color, which conveys its Welsh and
Celtic appeal (or the field of its
revised arms).

Friday 7 September, 2018–Next week is Oxford's last Open Day in 2018.

One of the commitments of the Vice Chancellor of Oxford, Louise Richardson, is to continue to enlarge the pool of applications. She is embarking on her second academic year.

Achieving this goal is harder to do than it might appear. For many decades, since the days when I was up at Oxford in the 1960s, the University has been expanding the range of applications from secondary school students and the percentage of entrants from the elite (so-called "public" schools because they draw from a wide geographical area) schools has fallen every decade.

One of the problems in attracting promising students from schools that do not ordinarily send their graduates to Oxford is that the University is foreign to them. They are unlikely to know any Oxford alumni. 

2. Exeter College, also on the Turl, has
its purple Welcome banner out.

To address this problem, Oxford University and its constituent colleges have organized two "Open Days" when Oxford's 38 colleges and six Permanent Private Halls (PPHs) open their doors to visiting teenagers who are prospective applicants:

• The first is usually toward the end of June, about two weeks after the end of the last (Trinity) term.
• The other is two weeks before the opening of the first (Michaelmas) term, which in 2018 is next Friday, 14 September (the Feast of St Michael the Archangel is 29 September).

Your Oxbridge Pursuivant has taken some pictures of colleges decked out for Open Days, and have selected five of them for a Walking Tour.

If you want to check out other colleges than the ones on the list, the Oxbridge Pursuivant would like to recommend a handy guide, Oxford College Arms, which was published this month. Order it here: https://amzn.to/2NXh0F1.  It is also on sale by Blackwell's.

A guide to Oxford's 44 colleges and halls, starting from their coats of arms.

The book covers all 44 colleges and PPHs and is up to date through August 2018 (including, for example, the Norrington Table results since 2006). It is a good way for visitors to Oxford–parents, applicants, alumni, students–to stay up to date on the arms, locations, histories and current standings of the colleges and halls.

The photos show that the colleges and halls are becoming more competitive about Open Day. For that day, the college gates are opened wide. The signs signifying "Keep Out" or "£6 Admission" are replaced by welcoming banners, balloons, and open gates.  


Some colleges take the competition to the next level.  Unfairly? You be the judge. Here are some Open Day stories from four colleges and one hall–Jesus, Exeter, Trinity, Regent's Park College, and Lady Margaret Hall. 

3. Trinity College is central, next to the Morse-featured
White Horse, Blackwell's, and the Bodleian libraries.

We start our walking tour going north on Turl Street. We pass Lincoln College on our right, visit Jesus on our left, then Exeter on our right. We now face Trinity College. We take it all in and turn left at the corner, intending to head next for St Regent's College in St Giles. 

However, as we pass Boswell's, we are hijacked. We are offered a free ride akin to that in Midnight in Paris–to a place called LMH, with the promise of free ice cream at the destination. Read on.

4. Regent's Park College makes itself
known in front of the Sheldonian.

1. Jesus College. As one walks on The Turl north from High Street, Jesus is on the left. I was advised by Paul Walton, who knows a thing or two about Wales, that the green color of Jesus is related to its Welsh affiliation, because its foundation was promoted in 1571 by Welshman Dr Hugh Price of St David's Cathedral.  However, the original field of Price's coat of arms had the tincture (colour) of azure (blue). The field's tincture was later revised to vert (green), perhaps in honor of the Green family, or in homage to Price's Welsh heritage.  

Queen Elizabeth is the founder of Jesus College; it is the only college founded at Oxford during her long reign. Its Celtic Studies library is special. Its most famous alumnus is surely Welshman T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"). Its student body is 15 percent Welsh.

2. Exeter College. Exeter College's color is purple, referencing the fact that it was founded in 1315 by Walter de Stapeldon, a Devon man who rose to become Bishop of Exeter and Treasurer of England under Edward II. Purple is the color of bishops. The eight pairs of golden keys in the Exeter coat of arms reflect the episcopal origin of the college, as St Peter, the first bishop, was given "the keys to the kingdom of heaven", one being for what he "bound" or "loosed" on earth and one for what he thereby "bound" or "loosed" in heaven, as the St James translation of Matthew 18:18 (https://bit.ly/2M7CyNf) goes. Exeter was originally called Stapeldon Hall; it is considered the fourth-oldest college at Oxford.

3. Trinity College. Trinity's arms are those of its Founder, Sir Thomas Pope. The tincture on his arms is azure (blue), with the metal or (gold). The college colors are blue and white. Pope was a Catholic entrusted with the task of dissolving and emptying out church-owned colleges. Durham College was a seminary established by the Bishop Prince of Durham. After Catholicism was reinstated by Mary I, Pope established a new Catholic college on the spot.

5a. Offering a Free Ride to LMH.

4. Regent's Park College. Things are not always what they seem. Regent's Park College is the smallest of the six Permanent Private Halls. The PPHs are increasingly being given similar status as the full colleges, but because of their close religious affiliations are deemed to be less independent than the full colleges. 

Regent's Park College sells itself as a quiet place near the center of Oxford. Its origins go back to a Baptist conference in 1752. The original institution was founded in 1810 and moved to Pusey Street, off St Giles, in 1927. It is near St Cross College, for graduate students, which shares an entrance with Pusey House. 

5b. Dishing the free ice cream at LMH.

Regent's Park College welcomes students in the arts, humanities and social sciences. A few study to be Baptist ministers. The Library includes a special focus on the history of dissenters. In fact, because of its history of religious dissent, members of Regent's Park College are discouraged from using Latin! The college Grace is recited in English by the Principal: For the gifts of your grace and the community of this college, we praise your name, O God. Amen. At the end of Formal Hall the Principal signals the departure of senior members (there is usually no High Table) with the words: "The grace and peace of God be with us all. Amen." Amen to that.

5. Lady Margaret Hall (LMH). Just as Regent's Park College is a hall, so Lady Margaret Hall is a college, as is St Edmund Hall.

5c. Picnic at LMH, by the Cherwell, 1918.
Two Saunders sisters (L) and C.S.L.

LMH is located at the end of Norham Gardens, with property extending to a wide frontage on the River Cherwell. Since this is a bit of a hike without a bike from central Oxford, the offer of a lift with ice cream waiting at the end is a clever way of attracting the interest of potential applicants.

While the lure of free ice cream may seem to be unfair competition, how else expose impressionable students to the glory of the banks of the Cherwell, where picnicked in a 1918 photo three LMHers (two Saunders sisters at left and someone at right identified as C.S.L. who is clearly not C.S. Lewis).

ARMS: Jesus College, Oxford

Jesus College Coat of Arms
(improperly unguled or)

Blazon: Vert three stags trippant argent attired or. The JCR website has the arms displayed correctly according to this blazon, except that "attired" refers to the antlers only. The golden hooves are not indicated by the blazon, which does not include the words "and unguled" (hooved) before the last word, or. (Armed extends beyond the horns to teeth and claws, but this is not the word used in the blazon.)

Nominee. The coat of arms, in some form, belongs to Bishop Thomas Rotherham. It matches the arms in Rotherham's dining-hall portrait in neighboring Lincoln College, which he is credited with founding.  The Lincoln College coat of arms includes the three stags in the sinister section of its tripartite-in-pale shield. In the absence of evidence that Rotherham founded Jesus College, Oxford, the puzzle is: What are Rotherham's three attired stags doing up there adorning Jesus College?

Founder. Jesus College was in fact founded in 1571 by Elizabeth I, who issued a royal charter to that effect. It was the first Protestant college founded at Oxford, and the only one dating from Elizabeth's reign. Its full name is: "Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation."

Origin of the Jesus Arms.  The earliest depiction of the Jesus arms is believed to be about 1590, in a document held by the College of Arms, referring to the stags as having a blue (azure) field, but Peter Donoghue, Bluemantle Pursuivant, reports the arms were more likely added 90 years later, on John Speed’s 1605 Map of Oxfordshire, with a blue field. The green field first appeared in 1619 in an armorial quarry painted by one of the Van Linge brothers, and was generally used by 1730, although horizontal hatchings (indicating azure) were still used on college bookplates as late as 1761. Here are the theories:

• It has been claimed that Jesus "stole" the three stags from Lincoln, much as generati of Trinity men from the Eldon family have feasted on deer from the Magdalen College deer park. The counter-argument is that the origins of the two Rotherham arms are distinct. Former Lincoln College Rector Paul Langford has suggested that Jesus College continued the arms adopted by a theological college founded by Rotherham in his home town – Jesus College, Rotherham – which had been suppressed in the time of Edward VI. This does not explain what Rotherham contributed to the founding of Jesus College, Oxford other than leasing a building.
• Another theory is that the stags derive from the arms of Maud Green, Lady Parr, mother of Catherine Parr, last of the six wives of Henry VIII and stepmother to Elizabeth I, the Founder. 
• Most likely the arms of the College are those of Bishop Rotherham, and were assigned to Jesus College by mistake, when John Speed prepared his famed 1605 map of Oxford. Speed must have seen the arms on Lawrence Hall, Ship Street, which was given to Rotherham in 1476 and was leased to Jesus College in 1572. Speed must have taken the landlord's arms to be those of the College when drawing his map, a quarter-century after the arms of Lincoln College were confirmed by Lee, Portcullis Pursuivant.

Anecdotes. Lincoln and Jesus are neighbors on Turl Street ("the Turl"), of which the joke is often told: "Q. How is the Church of England like the Turl?" "A. It runs from the High to the Broad and it has Jesus." An American tourist is said to have entered Jesus College after the Civil War and asked the porter: "Say, is this Lincoln?" To which the porter replied: "You aren't the first person, sir, to confuse Lincoln with Jesus."

POETS: Oct. 21–Birthday, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This day in 1772 was born the Romantic poet-critic-philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, England. Like many others, he learned to be a dissenter at Cambridge.

His father was a C of E parish vicar and master of a grammar school who struggled to take care of 14 children from two marriages. Samuel Coleridge was child #14. He liked reading - his favorite book was The Arabian Nights - and was a good student in his father's school. But papa was done in by his multiple responsibilities and died when Samuel was only ten.

Samuel was packed off to board at Christ’s Hospital in London, the "blue-coat school," where the boys wore a blue gown and cap with yellow stockings. Coleridge hated it, but thrived under an English teacher who introduced him to great poetry. He also met Charles Lamb, who became a lifelong friend, and Tom Evans, who had an older sister (Mary) with whom Samuel fell in love.

Since Samuel's late father had wanted his son to be a clergyman, in 1791 Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge to study for holy orders in the C of E. However, during his first year he came under the influence of William Frend, a Fellow at Jesus with Unitarian beliefs and Coleridge's life goals came into question. Perhaps not coincidentally, Coleridge accumulated debt for his brothers to pay off - by no means the last time that Coleridge relied on others to pay off his debts (nobody's perfect).

In June 1794, traveling to Wales, Coleridge met another student, Robert Southey. He  broke his trip to spend time with his new friend talking about implementing Plato’s aristocracy-free Republic. They envisioned joining with ten other families to form a commune on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania in the newly independent colonies, sharing work and beliefs in a free-thinking environment, supported by a great library. (With hindsight, an ideal location would have been Berwick, Pa. - safely above the river and right between rich veins of coal and iron.)

Coleridge dropped out of Cambridge to join the army. He called himself Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. But he wasn't much of a soldier.

Instead of going to war, or to Pennsylvania, Coleridge married Sara Fricker and in 1797 moved to a small house in the country with a vegetable garden. That year he made friends with William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The three went walking in nearby hills called the Quantocks. As the sun went down and the moon rose over the sea. Coleridge came up with the idea for a poem about a sailor who kills an albatross and brings a curse upon his ship. It became The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in a 1798 collection of ballads he published with Wordsworth that was to be the starting gun in the Romantic era of poetry.

Coleridge was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated with laudanum, which fostered a recurring opium addiction, anxiety and periods of depression.  In today's language he may have had bipolar disorder. He quarreled with his wife and fell in love with Wordsworth's sister-in-law. He wrote a poem, Dejection: An Ode, and sailed to Malta to improve his health. Coleridge said:

I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book - let him relate the events of his own Life with honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.

Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan, Christabel, and Frost at Midnight and a prose tome Biographia Literaria. His critical work on Shakespeare and German idealist philosophy was influential. He coined the idea of "suspension of disbelief" in drama. He was a major influence on Emerson and American transcendentalism.

BIRTH: Aug. 16–T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), Oxonian

T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)

T[homas] E[dward] Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", was born on August 16, in Tremadoc (aka Tremadog), Wales. T. E. was the second of five sons born to Sir Thomas Chapman and Sarah Lawrence Junner. Junner was a Scottish governess to Sir Thomas's daughters. Sir Thomas had an affair with Junner in Wales. He then left his wife and he and Junner lived together as Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence in Ireland. The Lawrences then moved to Oxford.

T. E. matriculated at Jesus College, Oxford in 1907, studying history. He was fluent in Greek, Arabic and French. While at Oxford he joined the Oxford University Officer Training Corps. T.E. became an archaeological scholar and was recruited by the British Army military to conduct a military survey of the Negev Desert while doing archaeological research.

He famously became a champion and military strategist for Arab rebels against Ottoman Turkish rule. He was awarded the DSO but refused the KBE.

His book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) was an account of his exploits as a military advisor to Arabs in their revolt against the Turks, and was the basis for the film Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He was killed on a motorcycle in 1935 after leaving the military; he had swerved to avoid two boys in the road on bicycles.

WWI: Chavasse, Lawrence, Plumer (Updated Oct 29, 2017)

This being the Centennial of the Battle of Liège in the second year of The Great War aka World War I, I have been looking up again how Oxford alumni fared during the war.

Two alumni stand out among the many Brits who died (more than 908,000 from the British Empire), the many more who were injured (2 million), and the huge number who served (8.9 million). A third person, a famed Sandhurst-trained officer in World War I, is immortalized in Oxford because his coat of arms was adopted as the arms of St. Anne's College.

Noel Chavasse (Trinity, Oxford)

Noel Chavasse, twin brother of the Francis Chavasse who became the first Master in 1929 and co-founder with his father of St. Peter's Hall (later College), Oxford. Elements of the Chavasse coat of arms are in the St. Peter's coat of arms.

Noel and Francis both matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1904 (1905?), and competed in sports (rugby and athletics) for the University. Both twins ran for Britain in the Olympics. Noel Chavasse has been described as the "Oxford's greatest military hero in the 20th century" by David Horan, author of Oxford: A Cultural and Literary Companion.

During the Great War, Noel was in the medical corps, treating injured soldiers. For his bravery in August 1916 in Guillemont, Captain Noel Chavasse was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military honor, for the second time ("with Bar") – only one of three soldiers ever to have done so, the only soldier during World War I, and the only Oxford alumnus. His second VC was won in a battle in Belgium that killed him in 1917. He is buried in Belgium.

The Chavasse family compiled an extraordinary record in WW I. Noel's twin, Christopher, an Army chaplain wounded at Cambrai in 1917, won the MC. His younger brother Captain Francis Bernard Chavasse, also of the RAMC, was wounded at Hooge and was awarded the MC. His other younger brother, Lieutenant Aidan Chavasse also served with the 11th Battalion of the King’s Liverpool regiment, renowned as volunteering for dangerous missions and was judged by his Brigade-Major to be the bravest man under his command. He was wounded on a mission to inspect German wire near Sanctuary Wood in July 17. He sent his patrol back to safety and took cover in a shell-hole. His body was never found. In total, the Chavasse boys were awarded 21 medals for their actions during WW1. Their two sisters, Marjorie and May, volunteered to nurse at soldiers’ hospitals.

T. E. Lawrence (Jesus, Oxford)

T[homas] E[dward] Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", was born on August 16, in Tremadoc, Wales. Thomas Edward was the second of five sons born to Sir Thomas Chapman and Sarah Junner, the governess to his daughters with whom Sir Thomas had an affair in Wales and then in Ireland.

T. E. matriculated at Jesus College, Oxford in 1907, studying history. He was fluent in Greek, Arabic and French. While at Oxford he joined the Oxford University Officer Training Corps. T.E. became an archaeological scholar and was recruited by the British Army military to conduct a military survey of the Negev Desert while doing archaeological research. He famously became a champion and military strategist for Arab rebels against Ottoman Turkish rule. He was awarded the DSO but refused the KBE.

His book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) was an account of his exploits as a military advisor to Arabs in their revolt against the Turks, and was the basis for the film Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He was killed on a motorcycle in 1935 after leaving the military; he had swerved to avoid two boys in the road on bicycles.

Field Marshal Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer has become an Oxford hero of sorts because of although his daughter Eleanor Plumer. He did not attend Oxford, but she did, via an extension course at St. King's College, London. She then she became the fourth Principal of St. Anne's and took St. Anne's to full college status at Oxford. His memory is preserved in the form of the coat of arms of St. Anne's College, which were adopted in 1942 from Plumer's own arms, by permission of his daughter.

Field Marshal Plumer

Field Marshal Plumer was born in Torquay on March 13, 1857, and was educated at Eton and Sandhurst. He is best known for commanding the 2nd Army in the Ypres Salient in 1915-1917.  He came up through the ranks, understood his troops and was popular among his men, who nicknamed him ‘Old Plum and Apple’. He was both a disciplinarian and someone with a sense of humor.

Plumer first saw service in the Sudan at El Teb in 1884. In 1885-1887, Plumer took the Staff Course and fought in South Africa during the Boer War, where he led the relief column to Mafeking. In 1906 Plumer was made a Knight of the Realm. In May 1915,  given command of Second Army Corps based in the Ypres Salient, he moved the base from the Salient to Ypres, leaving behind the elevated Messines Ridge. Determined to recapture the Ridge, he had his engineers build tunnels underneath German lines. In June 1917, after detonating a gigantic explosion, his artillery and infantry attacked the ridge using a creeping barrage. Unlike the Battle of the Somme a year earlier, the attack was a major success. “Plumer is one of the few commanders who came out of the Great War with an enhanced reputation,” said Robin Neillands in The Great War Generals. In 1918, Plumer was appointed Commander of the British Army of the Rhine, a year later Governor of Malta and finally High Commissioner of Palestine. He died on July 16, 1932 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Plumer burned all his private papers before his death; the first book that came out about him was in 1935, by General Sir Charles Harrington.

(Postscript July 31: Today in 1917 began a major offensive against the Germans in Flanders. After many setbacks, leading to the replacement of Gough by Plumer, Haig eventually ordered major attacks on Passchendaele in late October, and ultimately the village was captured by Canadian and British troops on November 6, 1917, allowed Haig to claim victory. Some victory - made Pyrrhus look good. There were 310,000 British casualties vs. 260,000 Germans, to little advantage.  The Third Battle of Ypres remains one of the most costly and controversial offensives of World War I, symbolizing, for the British, the futile nature of trench warfare.)

BIRTH | Nov. 21–"Q", Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

Q (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch)

Today in 1863 was born in Cornwall, England, the anthologist and writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Quiller-Couch was a Trinity College, Oxford, alumnus and sometime Don.

He started writing well-regarded verse at Oxford. He  published under the pen name "Q" and was best known as an anthologist, e.g., of The Oxford Book of English Verse (1250-1900), a best-seller for 70 years.

At his retreat in Cornwall he was an active worker in politics for the Liberal Party. He was Commodore of the Royal Fowey Yacht Club from 1911 until his death. He was knighted in 1910. In 1928 he was made a Bard of Gorseth Kernow, taking the Bardic name Marghak Cough ("Red Knight").

He wrote a book for children, Sleeping Beauty, that is among the Grolier 100 Top Classics.

Like C.S. Lewis, he was later in life lured away to Cambridge with a University lectureship and a post at Jesus College, where he remained till his death by car accident at 80 years of age.

Even by Oxbridge standards Q was considered eccentric. He should be remembered by writers, suggests Garrison Keillor, for a piece of advice that is widely quoted but rarely attributed.  Q wrote in On the Art of Writing (1916):

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press: Murder your darlings.

More Oxford bios.