The Oxbridge Pursuivant

Sunday, March 1, 2015

BOAT RACE: Dinners 2015

Nick Rawlins, Oxford's Pro-Vice-Chancellor,
to speak at Chicago's 76th BRD, the 50th
Chicago BRD John Morrison has organized.

April 11 (Saturday, Race Day) - New York City, Boat Races Brunch. Viewing of the BBC record of the races, organized in recent years by the Oxford Business Alumni. 11 am: Viewing Party & Brunch Venue: Rose Hill, Manhattan. Location will be emailed to ticket holders. Contact: Joey Vlasto, info@oxalumny.org. Note: This is the first year that the women's boats compete on the same day and course as the men's boats. The men's blue boats compete at 4:50 pm GMT and the women's ("Newton") boats one hour later. In New York City the BBC should start showing the race at 11:50 am. BNY Mellon gets much credit for pursuing equality for the women's race. For late information, check here or the official site for the BNY Mellon Boat Races.

April 11 - New York, NY - 12.00 noon-2:30pm: Keble College Boat Race Brunch in New York with Warden Sir Jonathan Philips and Director of Development Jenny Tudge Venue: Home of George Evans (Keble, 1978) West 74th Street, New York, NY, USA. More information and $50 tickets available online.

April 11 - San Francisco, Live Viewing of Boat Races. 8:50 a.m., OUS Northern California. Kezar Pub.

April 11 - Vancouver, 4th Annual Boat Races Breakfast. Contact: StuartCBowyer@gmail.com. The men's race starts at 4:50 pm GMT - or 8:50 a.m. in Vancouver. 10 am: Vancouver Oxford & Cambridge Society Annual Boat Race Breakfast Venue: Manchester Public House, 1941 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V6J 1Z3, Canada.

April 11 - Portland, Ore., 9 am-12 noon local time - Oxbridge Cascades Alumni Society Viewing of the 2015 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Venue: Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub, 112 SW 2nd Ave, Portland, Oregon 97204, USA. According to Vancouver branch, Portland invented the Boat Race Breakfast, in which alumni gather at a local pub, many with old college or university gear, to watch the race live on TV. Always early morning in Oregon. Contact: Christopher Gondek, cgondek@ heronandcrane.com.

April 12 - Kingston, Ont., Boat Race Dinner, venue to be determined. Contact: Robert Darymple kingston@ousoc.oxon.org.

April 17 (Friday) - Ottawa - Vice Chancellor Andrew and Mrs. Jennie Hamilton and University of Oxford North American Office will host a drinks party for alumni and friends. Centre Block, Parliament of Canada, 111 Wellington Street Ottawa. 6-8 pm. (This is a different event from the BRD on April 25.) Tickets C$40 per person. Starting in January 2016 the Vice Chancellor will be President of New York University.

April 18 (Saturday) - Victoria - Annual VIOCS Boat Race Party Saturday, 6:30-9:30 pm, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (exhibits will be open) 1040 Moss Street, Victoria $36.00 p.p. Send your cheque to: Dr. Brian Scarfe (personally) Suite 416, 21 Dallas Road, Victoria, BC, V8V 4Z9 VIOCS Silent auction to help offset the cost of our splendid venue. Bring cheque book. For further information contact admin@VIOCS.ca or call Dr. Dorothy Kennedy at 250-384-4544.

April 19 (Sunday) - Los Angeles, Brunch. Held every year since at least 2005 (University Club, Pasadena). Will be at 12 noon at the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey - enjoy dazzling conversation, a luxurious champagne brunch, and a gorgeous view of the yachts while rooting on the dark and light blues while watching from a week-old DVD (no spoilers, please). Oxonians, Cantabrigians, friends and supporters are all welcome. This year’s teams seem particularly well matched, as in the anxious words of a late 1800s Oxford poet: “The Cambridge eight / have muscle and weight, / but the dark blue blades / fall sharp and straight.” The group assembles at 11:30 am, has brunch and then watches the Boat Races at 1:30 pm (since they are viewing from a DVD, the group is not bound to the Tidewater schedule). Contact: Ray Dean Mize raydean.mize@gmail.com.

April 21 (Tuesday) - San Francisco, 80th BRD. Presidio Golf Club, 8 Presidio Terrace. Speaker will be tech forecaster and futurist Paul Saffo (Cambridge). Contact: Leena.Bengani@oxfordalumni.org or Matthew Kaser, m.kaser@comcast.net.

April 23 (Thursday) - New York City, 82nd BRD, since 1933. As last year, the BRD will be at the University Club in New York. The toasts are to the President and Queen and the Universities, with a Response from the Universities. Speakers in April include Paul Bernstein, CEO of the Pershing Square Foundation, and Stephen Trachtenberg (Nuffield, Oxford), former President of the George Washington University. For several years, 2005-2008 and in some years before that, New York City had an Alumni Boat Race. Contact: Hervé Gouraige (Merton), dinner chairman; hgouraige@comcast.net.

April 25 (Saturday) - Ottawa BRD. The Cambridge Society of Ottawa hosts an annual BRD that some Oxonians attend. This year's BRD is at the Britannia Yacht Club. Contact: Neil Bliss, nwbliss@magma.ca or (613) 745-5179; or Oxford Secretary Harry Corrin, ous.ottawa@gmail.com.

May 8 (Friday) - Washington, DC BRD. National Press Club. Contact: George Keys, gkeys at jordankeys.com; Giles_Howson at yahoo.com; dlaw@curtin-law.com. The Washington BRD does not take credit cards. You sign up for the mailing list for a one-time charge of $10. You then print out the form that is emailed to you and you mail it in with a check for $125 ($100 for those who have matriculated within the last five years). Featured speakers on May 8 - H.M. Ambassador to the United States Sir Peter John Westacott will respond for the Universities to Daniel Yergin. Nicholas Holland, former Blue Boat oarsman, will report on the Boat Races that were rowed April 11 - if you want to know the outcomes before then, a spoiler is here.

May 29 (Friday) - Vancouver BRD. Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. Anne Giardini, Chancellor of Simon Fraser University, will toast the Universities. Xenia Kritsos will toast Cambridge. Hon. Peter Woolley will toast Oxford. Dr. Robert Dunn will give the loyal toast to the Queen. Contact: Dr. Dorothy Kennedy, admin@viocs.ca. Website: www.vocs.ca.

May 30 (Saturday) - Boston (New England Society) BRD. Contact: Dona Cady is President of OCSNE, president@oxcamne.org; David Manns is Secretary, secretary@oxcamne.org; Belinda Wilkes is Treasurer, treasurer@oxcamne.org. For dinner details, sign up here (you will need to input your university/college of matriculation).

Cities for Which Dates Not Reported (To add an event - contact JTMarlin@post.harvard.edu)

Calgary, Alberta. Contact: Geoffrey Cowling, gcowling@iridiumrisk.com; jonathan.d.connell@ gmail.com. Denver, Colo. Contact: Chris.Hansen@ihs.com Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Contact: EnriqueBargioni@msn.com Houston, Tex. Contact: Kevin Bradford, houston@ousoc.oxon.org Indianapolis, Ind. Contact Stephen Smith, SKSmith1@msn.com Kansas City, Mo. Contact: BartholomewDean at gmail.com. Little Rock, Ark. Contact: frank.thurmond@gmail.com. Montreal, Que. Contact: Catherine.Gillbert@videotron.ca. New Orleans, La. Contact: David Campbell, davidc1010@ att.net. Phoenix, Ariz. Contact: jonathan.rose@asu.edu. Portland, Maine Contact: TracieJeanReed @gmail.com. Raleigh, N.C. Contact: Steven Wilson, scrwilson@gmail.com Richmond, Va. Contact: Matthias Hild, n@hild.org Salt Lake City, Utah. Contact: Russell Fisher, utah.oxford@ gmail.com. San Diego, Calif. Contact: caio@handsupincentives.com. Contact: Ean.Hernandez@ eanh.net St. Louis, Mo. Contact: David Pollack, missouri@ousoc.oxon.org Toronto, Ont. Contact: oxfordsocietytoronto@gmail.com. Winnipeg, Manitoba. Contact: Robert Dawson, dawson at dawsonlaw.com.

Read here about the long History of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race and the Boat Race Dinners.
Other boating posts: Head of the Charles 2016

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Harvard Raises $5 Billion in 15 Months

Harvard's Widener Library.

The Harvard Campaign received $5 billion in gifts and pledges in the 15 months ending December 31, 2014. This is:

Nearly 77 percent of the $6.5-billion goal announced in September 2013.
It is on top of $2.8 billion of prior commitments.
The $5 billion includes $2.2 billion in gifts and pledges.

The $5 billion updates the $4.3-billion total announced June 30, adding:

A $350-million gift to the Harvard School of Public Health.
A gift of $60-$75 million (the total was not disclosed) from Steve Ballmer ’77 for a dozen computer-science professorships in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, announced in November.
Gifts for the fall launches of campaigns by the Graduate School of Design, the Graduate School of Education, and the Medical School.

Monday, February 16, 2015

A Financial History of Cambridge - Comments

Nothing like this for Oxford yet.

Not much has been published about the financial history of Oxford and Cambridge.

The exception that proves the rule is a book by Robert Neild (Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and Emeritus Professor of Economics) about The Financial History of Cambridge University reviewed in Oxford Today (November 2012).

This book was published by the Thames River Press, the website of which makes clear it specializes in recherché books. The Press reports that it relies heavily on its authors to do their own book marketing.

Meanwhile no similar history seems yet been published about the finances of Oxford, other than in a section of a book about the Oxford University Press. What is readily available is an aggregated endowment comparison showing Cambridge in first place among UK universities with an endowment of £4.9 billion as of 2013. Oxford is in second place with £4.03 billion; both university totals include their college endowments.

The lack of data is important, because negative consequences for students and faculty follow from the financial starvation of educational institutions or the misdirection of resources.

Alumni are in a position to improve that situation. Higher education has long been supported by democratic governments. Educated giving is twice blessed - for the graduates who give and for the universities who receive.

The Three Ages of Cambridge Finances

Neild writes about three ages of Cambridge University financing. I will give them my own names:

Medieval - from the original march of disgruntled Oxford scholars to the fens up to, say, 1939.
Meritocratic - from World War II to Margaret Thatcher.
Bitterly disappointing - from Thatcher's initiation of greatly reduced funding and tighter controls to the present.

Comment

I comment from the perspective of someone who has spent a lot of time officially reviewing government and nonprofit budgets - and unofficially as a curious student of university budgets and endowments on both sides of the Atlantic.

1. Medieval Practices - from the Migration of Oxford Scholars to 1939

The thrust of Neild's financial history seems to be that prior to World War II, both Cambridge and Oxford engaged in medieval practices compared with their modernizing private-sector contemporaries. The sunlight of information penetrated a growing share of capital-driven businesses, but ironically not so much to the shadows of academic enclaves.

University investments tended to be in land, and agricultural land was still preferred - Cambridge and the colleges were slow to move away from physical estates to stocks and bonds. The name "Estates Bursar" is still used widely for the person who manages college endowments, an indicator of colleges' continued, perhaps wistful, focus on property rents as a source of non-tuition income.

For the 37 years between 1883 and 1920, agricultural land was not a reliable investment. The clever investing in stocks initiated by John Maynard Keynes at King's College was a rarity. Trinity College, Cambridge was just lucky, says Neild, that its exchange of one poorly performing agricultural property for another better-performing one turned out to be a financial coup. The 7th Duke of Devonshire showed what could be done by investing in steel and ship-building, and his money financed the Cavendish Lab.

Neild says that tuition policies were egalitarian. In 1842, a nobleman paid £16 in tuition whereas a student on financial assistance paid 15/-. Fundraising is nothing new - appeals for aid were frequently made to those with deep pockets.

2. 1940s-1970s (World War II to Thatcher) - the Golden Age of Meritocracy

The equalizing influence of World War II led the British Government to seek to make the country's higher education system more meritocratic, and funded students to go to university.

Universities had suffered from price inflation during the war, and the British Government - like the U.S. Government with its G.I. Bill - sought to reward its military veterans, those who survived, with access to higher education.

The system of financial support for scholars that the postwar British Government put in place, along with National Health, came with some general guidelines to ensure that the elite universities were admitting their share of worthy commoners.

At some Oxbridge colleges (I know Trinity College, Oxford was one), dons seeking a more diverse student body went round to grammar schools to encourage them to attend their college. If it was a golden age, it was because the universities were given a third-party-funded source of tuition income from a broad range of graduating secondary-school students, and Oxbridge could pick from the best and brightest.

No wonder the medieval custom of appealing for money from well-off Old Members fell into disuse. (When I told an incoming President of Trinity College, Oxford that I, as the College's Rep in the USA, wrote an appeal letter in November every year on behalf of the college to American alumni, he asked me, seriously: "Why do you do that?" I have been assured that none of the Presidents since that one would ask this question.)

3. Since the 1970s - Bitter Disappointment

Neild was appointed a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1971 and may be reflecting his own disappointment in describing what happened to Cambridge finances in the third phase. When "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, bent on making Britain more efficient and reduce the burden on taxpayers, she was determined to make higher education less dependent on government aid.

She - and subsequent Prime Ministers - told British universities that they should emulate the American model and view perennial fund-raising from alumni as a natural way of getting back from university graduates the proven contribution to their lifetime incomes of a university education.

Government grants to universities for research were subjected to more rigorous competition at the same time as money was cut from tuition support.

An increasingly desired attribute of a prospective Head of College was an ability to bring in money from alumni, corporations, foundations or governments. Universities by the 1990s had formidable fund-raising arms, replicated at the college level by alumni relations officers and development officers.

While a new equilibrium may be emerging, and recent fundraising successes at both Oxford and Cambridge suggest that they have adapted well to the post-Thatcher climate - newer universities are having a more difficult time - the new environment may not be to the satisfaction of those who liked the Golden Age.

Certainly, something had been lost from the calmness of the pre-Thatcher days when careers of all kinds were less competitive and academics one could think at one's own pace and with a wider latitude for eccentricity and introversion.

Financing of the Cambridge Colleges

Neild's comments about the financial practices at King's College under Keynes and at his own college, Trinity, have led me to wonder whether it would be possible to compare the Cambridge colleges over time.

As a first cut at this question, I have used a spreadsheet to look at data on the fixed assets of the Cambridge colleges based on how old they are, using Neild's cutoff of World War II rather than the traditional distinction at Cambridge between the 16 "old" colleges being only the ones founded before 1596.

My hypothesis is that the older (pre-World War II) colleges were better able in general to cope with the cuts during the Thatcher era because of their larger resources, but that some newer colleges with special missions had a few advantages because they were known to be addressing weak points in the Cambridge university college structure, such as lower accessibility to higher education for women and older students.

In about 2006 - based on available data - Cambridge colleges had 11,802 undergraduates in residence and 6,489 graduates - 18,264 total students (components don't add up because students can be counted twice if they change status during the year).

The colleges had £4,375 million in fixed assets. In the United States, we would call that £4.4 billion - an average of £240,000 per student.

Of the total fixed assets, £3.9 billion represents the fixed assets of the 21 colleges established before World War II. That amounts to an average of £187.2 million per college.

The next group of colleges are three established as institutions in the City of Cambridge but not brought within the university until after World War II. These three colleges had an average total fixed assets of £61.8 million.

Finally, seven colleges were newly established since World War II. They had average fixed assets of £37.1 million.

I plan to drill down on this some more, but in the meantime would be interested in comments - either posted, or sent direct to me at john (at) cityeconomist.com.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

OXFORD BOOKS: Blackwell's Office

Peter Berry showing how Basil Blackwell (see
portrait) would whistle downstairs for help.

OXFORD, UK– I was one of only two people to take the half-hour tour of Basil Blackwell's office in Oxford one day last week.

So I can tell you what a great tour it was without fear that for the time being it will be too crowded when you show up (tour times are at the end of this review).

First, our tour guide, Peter Berry – an official Oxford guide – showed us the original footprint of the Blackwell's second-hand bookshop founded in 1879 by Basil Blackwell's father, Benjamin Henry Blackwell (1849-1924). It is marked on the floor in black.

When more than one customer at a time came into the original shop, says Peter, the piled-up books left no room for Mr. Blackwell. His solution was to retreat through the rear entrance and wait until it became clearer which of the two customers was serious about buying a book.

Blackwell's expanded first by taking over the shop next door.

The Whistler tube. A photo of the
Merton crew on which Basil
Blackwell rowed is on the wall.

Basil Blackwell

It was left to Basil Blackwell (1881-1984), Benjamin's son, to turn the company into an empire.

Basil was the first in the family to go to university. He attended Magdalen College School and then Merton College, where rowed for the first eight.

From various accoutrements of his office it is clear he was proud of his rowing days.

Basil Blackwell's Merton
College oar as pen.

Basil Blackwell apprenticed to booksellers in London, then joined his father's firm in 1913. He stayed on in his father's business and brought it upmarket, selling new books and then becoming a publisher of b ooks and journals, to the point where it became a giant conglomerate within the English-Speaking world.

Benjamin Blackwell died in 1924. Basil Blackwell went to work adding shops, expanding them, and publishing books and journals.

The Gaffer's fireplace, with Delft
tiles all round.

Basil Blackwell was called "the Gaffer", an English colloquial reference to someone who is older and is the boss. J. R. R. Tolkien has a character in The Lord of the Rings named Gaffer. The character is probably named after Basil Blackwell because Blackwell was Tolkien's first publisher. They both went to Merton...

The original two Blackwell's shops.

Gaffer had his office on the second floor of the original bookshop, overlooking the Broad and the Sheldonian Theater. He had a sign saying "GAFFER" on his desk. He used a whistling tube to call for help from the staff downstairs. He had his own telephone switchboard, which had toggles for answering, muting and transferring.

The Record-Setting Norrington Room

With nowhere to go to the left or the right (hemmed in by the White Horse on one side and the New Bodleian Library, now called the Weston Library, on the other), Blackwell's was forced to expand to the rear.

The Gaffer's desk.

Eventually, Sir Arthur Norrington, President of Trinity College when I was in residence there, negotiated a hugely beneficial deal for both the shop and the College. The Norrington Room is built underneath Trinity College's library – a solution to Blackwell's space needs that provides a healthy source of rental income to Trinity.

The Norrington Room is listed by Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest single room selling books, with 160,000 books for sale on three miles of shelving.

At its peak in perhaps 2002, Blackwell's had 70 bookshops and at least 800 journals.

The other member of our tour
checking out the phone system.

Sir Basil's Honors

Sir Basil Blackwell died in 1984. He is remembered and honored for many causes, mostly public-spirited, that he championed:

He was the bookseller who helped break the infamous "Ring" that colluded to close off open competition in auctions, "taking bread from the mouths of the widows and orphans" of Oxford scholars.
He was knighted in 1956 by Queen Elizabeth II, the only bookseller ever to receive that honor.
That year he was given the honorary Freedom of the City of Oxford.
In 1959 he was elected to an honorary Fellowship at Merton.
In 1979 he was awarded a Doctorate of Civil Law honoris causa at the Oxford Encaenia.
In 1966 he was a prosecution witness in the private prosecution attempt to bar the book Last Exit to Brooklyn from UK publication

The Sheldonian, viewed from the Gaffer's office.

After his death, Basil Blackwell's heirs sold off the journals publishing arm to Wiley-Blackwell for close to $1 billion. Only one member of the family, Toby Blackwell, was eventually left in the business, which is now partly employee-owned.

Tour Information

Tours are conducted from mid-January through the last Friday in March. They are offered six times per week - Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, at 11 am and 2 pm. The tours meet in the front of the original store, marked out in black on the floor.

More Oxford Bios.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

OXFORD RIOT | 93 Dead on Feb. 10 (Updated May 11, 2016)

St. Scholastica (480-542), Twin Sister of St.
Benedict.

Oxford was the scene of a riot on Feb. 10, St Scholastica Day. That was in 1355, 660 years ago.

It all started with a heated argument over drinks in the Swindlestock Tavern, where St Aldate's now intersects with Queen Street. I have provided a photo of the current location below.

Two University students – Walter Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield – tangled with the tavern owner, John Croidon. The students had the temerity to suggest that Croidon was a swindler, that his drinks were of poor quality.

After an argument they threw their drinks in Croidon's face. He retaliated and then followed armed clashes.

Centuries later, in the 1850s, students continued to view St. Scholastica’s Day as an opportunity for confrontation.

Why Would Scholastica Cause a Riot?

Marker of the Swindlestock Tavern
location in Oxford. Photo by JTMarlin.

Was there anything about Scholastica (c. 480-542) that would inspire students to complain about their drinks to a tavern owner?

Not obviously. A saint of the both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, she was the twin sister of Benedict of Nursia, Umbria, after whom the Popes through Benedict XVI were named. She and Benedict were raised in a wealthy family until the time he left to study in Rome.

Benedictine tradition holds that Scholastica lived in a convent at Plumbariola about five miles from Monte Cassino, the first Benedictine convent. Scholastica would visit her brother annually at a location near his abbey, and they would spend the day together, worshiping and discussing sacred texts.

Scholastica Didn't Take No for an Answer

A story that might inspire a student is one about her brother Benedict's paying her one of his visits, when they are both elderly. He decides it is time to leave according to his own Rule. She asks him to stay and he says no.

Then Scholastica closes her hands in prayer and a storm then immediately starts outside their guest house. Benedict frowns and asks: "What have you done?"

She replies innocently: "I asked you and you would not listen. Then I asked my God, and He did." So Benedict is unable to return to his monastery, and they continue their discussions long into the night.

According to Gregory's Dialogues, three days later, from his cell, Benedict saw his sister's soul leaving the earth and ascending to heaven in the form of a shining white dove. Benedict had her body brought to his monastery and laid in the tomb he had prepared for himself. Scholastica is now the patron saint of nuns, and convulsive children, and is invoked against storms and rain.

The Oxford Riot

The Oxford riot back in 1355 was actually no laughing matter. Oxford's Mayor, John de Bereford, asked the Chancellor of the University, Humphrey de Cherlton, to arrest the two students who had complained about the tavern owner's wine. Instead, 200 students came to the support of the two students (Spryngeheuse and Chesterfield). Then locals poured in on behalf of the tavern owner. The Town-Gown riot lasted two days.

The aftermath was 63 scholars dead and 30 local residents. The riot was on top of earlier riots in Oxford that resulted in another 90 deaths.

The rioting scholars were eventually pacified and the University was in due course judged to be the victim. As penance, every year, on February 10, the Mayor and Councillors of Oxford were required to march bareheaded through the streets. In addition, each year they were required to pay a fine to the university of a penny for every scholar killed, 5s/3d annually. The penance ended in 1825, when the Mayor of Oxford unilaterally decided that this had gone on long enough and refused to comply any more.

On February 10, 1955, on the 600th anniversary of the riots, Town and Gown were reconciled:

The Mayor of Oxford was given an honorary degree.
The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University was made an Honorary Freeman.

Sources

Butler, Alban. "St. Scholastica", The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints, Vol. I,
D. & J. Sadlier, & Company, 1864.
Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Book II, Chapters 33 and 34.
Koenig, Chris. "Rioting over wine led to 90 deaths", The Oxford Times.
Miller, Carol M., The St. Scholastica Day Riot: Oxford after the Black Death, Tallahassee (Florida)
Community College, USA.
Morris, James. Oxford. Harcourt, 1965, 69.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

TRINITY: Pitt Society lunch, 2015

Here I am at Trinity College, Oxford for the William Pitt
Society Lunch today. The College's chapel is behind me.
Photo: Alice Tepper Marlin.

OXFORD, U.K., Feb. 7, 2015 - Today I attended with Alice the William Pitt Society lunch, honoring William Pitt "the Elder", 1st Earl of Chatham.

Pitt is one of three British Prime Ministers who studied at Trinity, the other two being Lords Wilmington (Spencer Compton, the second Prime Minister after Robert Walpole) and North. Pitt's portrait hangs over high table; Lord North's portrait is less prominently positioned.

Pitt is the visionary who assembled the British Empire. He is "remembered as the architect of the victories of the Seven Years War, in which Canada and parts of India and Africa were conquered", says the Pitt Society program.

In the Trinity chapel, at an excellent
music recital (piano, choir, cellos) by
students. Photo: Alice Tepper Marlin.

In the 13 American colonies, Pitt's troops chased away the French and hostile Indians, under the leadership of Scotsman General Edward Braddock, George Washington's military mentor. Braddock died in the assault on Fort Duquesne, near what is now named (after Pitt) Pittsburgh. On his deathbed, Braddock gave then-Colonel Washington his battle sash. Washington wore it the rest of his life and some of his best-remembered portraits show him wearing it.

Alice and Paul Gunn. Photo by JT Marlin

Pitt the Elder made possible the independence of the 13 colonies. Lord North, Trinity's third Prime Minister, made it, shall we say, inevitable.

The Pitt Society lunch was created in 2007 to thank, during their lifetimes, those Trinity alumni who have included a legacy to Trinity in their wills. Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity, kindly noted that a letter I wrote launched the Pitt Society in 2006.

In the first year, the Society had 21 members. It now has more than 100.

Chris and John at the former Red Lion. Photo by Alice
Tepper Marlin.

Some of the alumni that Alice and I spoke with at the lunch were:

Ian Senior (1958)
Nigel Armstrong-Flemming (1958)
Mark Pellew (1961)
Arthur Thorning (1962)
Mike Baldwin (1963)
Paul Gunn (1963)
Roger Baresel (1966)

Postscript 1: I was curious why William Pitt the Younger, the 2nd Lord Chatham, was not Trinity's fourth Prime Minister. Not only did he attend a different college, he migrated all the way to Cambridge, where he took up residence at Pembroke College. The hike over the fens must have worn him out. Because he was so thin, he was called "the bottomless Pitt".

Postscript 2: That evening Paul Gunn joined Alice, Chris and me at what used to be called the Red Lion in Wolvercote, just outside Oxford. Paul lives in Stratford-upon-Avon. Back in 1962-64, Paul was on the same staircase as me at Trinity - Staircase 5 on the front quad. (Staircase 6 is the one, I understand, where Bill Clinton attended a party at which he did not inhale.)

The late Bede Rundle, a philosophy Fellow, was also on the same staircase. I just heard that his wife has sadly also died.

The name of the Red Lion was changed - the establishment is under new management. I will some day finish this postscript 2 when I have found out the new name.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

BIRTHDAY: Jan. 3–J. R. R. Tolkien, CBE, Oxonian

On the 14 shelves for J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis at
Blackwell's, Oxford, Feb. 10, 2015 (660th anniversary
of the St. Scholastica Day riots), Tolkien dominated.

See note at end about the 9 pm toast on January 3, 2016.

This day in 1892 was born J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He was known in the family as Ronald.

His parents were English. His father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, was sent to South Africa to head up the local branch of a British bank.

Arthur and his wife Mabel parented two boys. The second was Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, born two years after Ronald in 1894.

Their stay in South Africa was in the 18-year interlude between the two Boer Wars, the second having its roots in the disastrous Jameson Raid supported by Oxonian Cecil Rhodes.

The Tolkiens' time in South Africa did not end well:

Ronald as an infant was bitten in their garden by a large baboon spider. He later said he didn't remember it. But we know that being bitten by a spider is how Spider Man originated.

More seriously, when Ronald was three, the family went back to England to see their relatives, leaving their father behind to follow them. But during the interval before he could get away from South Africa he was killed by rheumatic fever.

Tolkien's mother Mabel, suddenly destitute, took her children to live with her parents in Birmingham.

On the other hand, Mabel as a result homeschooled her two boys, stressing botany. This does not seem to have been a bad thing for Ronald! His favorite subjects were languages, and his mother taught him the rudiments of Latin early in life. He could read by the age of four and could write fluently soon afterwards. He said he disliked Treasure Island and thought Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was "amusing but disturbing".

Birmingham Days

J. R. R. Tolkien and his book The Hobbit (1937).

For a decade (1900-1911) he was enrolled at King Edward's School in Birmingham, with a brief sojourn at St. Philip's School.

His mother Mabel became Roman Catholic in 1900, despite the opposition of her Baptist relatives. They joined her late husband's relatives in stopping all financial assistance to her, thereby earning the timeless contempt of Tolkien's fans.

In 1904, when Tolkien was 12, his mother Mabel –only 34–died of acute diabetes. Ronald and his brother were now 100 percent orphans. Prior to her death, Tolkien's mother wisely, it seems, placed both of her sons under the guardianship of her close friend Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. Young Tolkien had great respect for Fr. Morgan.

Tolkien was enrolled in the St. Edward's School Officers Training Corps and became a cadet. He was part of the school contingent that lined the route for the 1910 procession to Westminster Abbey to crown King George V. While still in his early teens, Tolkien's cousins Mary and Marjorie Inceldon introduced him to their made-up language, Animalic. He joined Mary and others in the invention of a more complex language called Nevbosh. Then Tolkien invented his own language, Naffarin.

In 1911, at King Edward's School, Tolkien and three friends formed a semi-secret society, the T.C.B.S. (Tea Club and Barrovian Society, referring to tea-drinking at Barrow's Stores near the school). That year, Tolkien went with a dozen friends on a summer holiday, hiking in Switzerland from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen. He said that memories of this holiday served as the basis for his description of the hike of Bilbo Baggins and company across the Misty Mountains in The Lord of the Rings.

Meanwhile, 16-year-old Ronald Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, three years older, when he and his brother Hilary moved into a Birmingham boarding house. Fr. Morgan, as Ronald's guardian, viewed Edith as the reason for Tolkien's having done poorly on some exams at St. Edward's, and objected especially to Tolkien's being involved with an older, Protestant woman. He prohibited Tolkien from meeting or even corresponding with her until he was 21.

Tolkien opted to obey this prohibition. He wrote later:

I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most fathers ... I don't regret my decision, though it was very hard on my lover. The effects were not wholly good: I fell back into folly and slackness and misspent a good deal of my first year at college.

Oxford Undergraduate

Tolkien was admitted to Oxford, residing at Exeter College, Oxford. He initially studied Classics but switched in 1913 to English Language and Literature, graduating in 1915 with First Class Honours. During his studies Tolkien read an Old English poem by Cynewulf, containing these two lines of poetry:

Hail Earendel brightest of angels Over Middle Earth sent to men.

This couplet, says Garrison Keillor in The Writer's Almanac, was a seed that grew into books about Middle Earth characters.

On the evening of his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith to say he never stopped loving her. He asked her to marry him.

Edith replied that she had already accepted another proposal. Tolkien immediately went to see her. By the end of the day, Edith had agreed to accept Tolkien's proposal. Following their engagement, Edith announced she was converting to Catholicism at Tolkien's insistence, thereby - like Tolkien's mother - losing financial support from her own family. No one can say the Tolkiens took the easy way.

Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were married at St. Mary Immaculate Roman Catholic Church, Warwick, in March 1916. Tolkien, cut off from assistance from all relatives, was a NINJA - No Income, No Job nor Assets.

World War I Service

In 1914 the U.K. had entered the Great War. Tolkien's relatives expected him to volunteer at once for the British Army, and professed shock that he would be so unpatriotic as to delay enlisting until after completing his degree.

After graduation, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He trained for eleven months and then boarded a troop transport for France, where he was assigned as a signals officer to the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, which had taken many casualties in heavy fighting.

At the end of June 1916, Lieutenant Tolkien joined his unit near Amiens, commanding men drawn mainly from Lancashire's mining, milling, and weaving towns. Tolkien felt close to them, but was forbidden by military protocol from developing friendships with them. Tolkien later lamented:

The most improper job of any man... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

Tolkien's time in combat meant Edith lived with the fear, as in every military family, that a knock on the door at any time could mean news of their warrior's death. (My grandmother got such a knock on the door announcing the loss in action of her bomber-pilot son, my uncle Willem.) To get around the British Army postal censorship, the Tolkiens developed a secret code for his letters home.

In October 1916, Tolkien came down with trench fever, a disease carried by the lice common in the trenches. Tolkien was sent home to England to recover, finding that many of his dearest school friends had been killed in service, including two members of the T.C.B.S. at St. Edward's School.

By the time that Tolkien returned to England, Tolkien's battalion was wiped out. He said: "By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."

Weak and emaciated from disease, Tolkien spent the remainder of the war alternating between hospitals and garrison duties, and he began writing. In 1917-1918 his illness persisted, but he was able to do enough service at army bases to earn promotion to Lieutenant. At this time, Edith gave birth to their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien.

Postwar Career at Leeds and Oxford

After the war ended, Tolkien worked on the Oxford English Dictionary, mainly Germanic words beginning with W.

In 1920, he was appointed Reader in English at the University of Leeds, where he produced A Middle English Vocabulary and a definitive edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with E. V. Gordon, both standard works among academics.

Tolkien then obtained a plum career appointment, serving from 1925 to 1945 as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. In 1945-1958 he became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.

Tolkien's six-years-younger friend and fellow Oxford don C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) during these years organized meetings in his rooms at University College to discuss literature. The group was called the Inklings, and Tolkien attended. (Tolkien lived for a time at 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford).

However, Tolkien wasn't always a C. S. Lewis fan. He didn't like the first Narnia book. He complained that it was untidy and eclectic - combining Father Christmas with an evil witch and including talking animals and children in the same story. Luckily, the audience for literature is broad enough to appreciate the geniuses of both tight-trimming Tolkien and sprawling Lewis.

Once, grading exams, Tolkien discovered a student had left blank a page in his examination booklet. Tolkien impulsively wrote on the page, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." This line turned into a bedtime story that he told his children, and then it became The Hobbit in 1937. The book is #81 in the timeline of the exciting new collection of 100 children's classics (1600-2000) put together by The Grolier Club in Manhattan.

Tolkien's writing about Middle Earth led to The Lord of the Rings in 1955, which includes a half-Elven character named Earendil the Mariner.

Honors and Death

Tolkien was honored as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on March 28, 1972.

He died the following year.

After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher published some books based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts. One is called The Silmarillion. These books, along with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a coherent fantasy world called Arda, within which is Middle Earth, and which Tolkien called legendarium. The great success of Tolkien's books led to a popular resurgence of the genre, making Tolkien a modern icon of fantasy or "high fantasy" literature.

Remembrance at 9 pm January 3, 2016

At 9pm your local time, the Tolkien Society invites Tolkien fans to raise a glass and toast the birthday of this much-loved author. The toast is simply:

The Professor!

All you need to do is stand, raise a glass of your choice of drink (not necessarily alcoholic), and say the words “The Professor” before taking a sip (or swig, if that’s more appropriate for your drink). Sit and enjoy the rest of your drink. Let us and others know what you’ll be drinking and where in the comments below, on Twitter (using #TolkienBirthdayToast) or Facebook. Note that the Society does not condone drinking alcohol if it endangers the health or safety of the drinker or others, or contravenes the law.

Listen to Sam's Speech to Frodo (Tolkien's Message to Us)
More Oxford bios.