Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community 0906014239, 9780906014233

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Supplementary Volume no. 24

CLASSICS IN 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY CAMBRIDGE CURRICULUM, CULTURE AND COMMUNITY

EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER STRAY

THE CAMBRIDGE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1999

11

M r Jebb and his friends. Four fellows of Trinity College: a photograph taken in the 1860s. At the back, W illiam Aldis W right, who as a dissenter was then ineligible for a fellowship, which he finally gained in 1878. In the 1860s he was college librarian. He produced an edition of Shakespeare, and with J. E. B.M ayor edited the Journal o f Philology. Left, Sedley Taylor (elected a fellow in 1861). Right, Joseph Prior (1860), tutor 1870-86. Front, seated: Richard Jebb (1862), tutor 1872-4; Regius Professor of Greek 1889-1906. R eproduced by perm ission o f the M aster and Fellows o f Trinity College, Cam bridge. Trinity College A dd m s.a.38 [51].

Ill CONTENTS page ABBREVIATIONS

V

ILLUSTRATIONS

vii

CONTRIBUTORS

ix

INTRODUCTION

xi

I

II

III

THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS (1822-1922): HIGH CULTURE AND THE POLITICS OF CURRICULUM Christopher Stray

1

HENRY SIDGWICK, CAMBRIDGE CLASSICS, AND THE STUDY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY: THE DECISIVE YEARS, 1866-9 Robert B. Todd

15

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CAMBRIDGE GREEK PLAY: 1882-1912 Pat Easterling

27

IV

WOMEN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914 Claire Breay

V

NOTHING BUT GIBBERISH AND SHIBBOLETHS?: THE COMPULSORY GREEK DEBATES, 1870-1919 Judith Raphaely

71

THE INVENTION (AND REINVENTION) OF ‘GROUP D’: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS, 1879-1984 Mary Beard

95

VI

VII

WINIFRED LAMB AND THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM David W. J. Gill

49

135

Vili THE CAMBRIDGE GREEK AND LATIN BOOK CLUB: A BRIEF ANTIPHONAL ACCOUNT, WITH AN APPENDIX John Crook and Joyce Reynolds

157

BIBLIOGRAPHY

166

INDEX

175

V

ABBREVIATIONS AJA

American Journal of Archaeology

AR

Archaeological Reports

BSA

Papers o f the British School at Athens

CAH

Cambridge Ancient History

CR

Classical Review

CambR

Cambridge Review

CUR

Cambridge University Reporter

ContR

Contemporary Review

FMAR

Fitzwilliam Museum, Annual Report o f the Syndicate

JHColl

Journal o f the History o f Collections

JHS

Journal o f Hellenic Studies

JP

Journal o f Philology

JRS

Journal o f Roman Studies

NCR

Newnham College Register

NDNB

New Dictionary o f National Biography

PBA

Proceedings o f the British Academy

PCA

Proceedings o f the Classical Association

PCPS

Proceedings o f the Cambridge Philological Society

REA

Revue des Etudes Anciennes

TLS

Times Literary Supplement

Ancient authors and works are referred to following the abbreviations in LSJ.

vii ILLUSTRATIONS Frontispiece

Mr Jebb and his friends.

1

The Classical Tripos, by John Lewis Roget, 1859.

2

Henry Sidgwick.

3

Janet Case as Athena in the Eumenides, 1885.

4

A scene from the Birds, 1883.

5

The Chorus of Ajax, 1882.

6

Menu for a Greek Play dinner, 1909.

7

Charles Villiers Stanford and the Furies, 1885.

8

The ‘Ideal Man’? Ion, 1890.

9

J.F. Crace as Cassandra in Agamemnon, 1900.

10 Rupert Brooke as the Herald in Eumenides, 1906. 11 The Palace of Atreus in Agamemnon, 1900. 12 J.T. Sheppard as Peithetairos in Birds, 1903. 13 Agnata Ramsay triumphs in the Classical Tripos, 1887. 14 The protected female. 15 Compulsory Greek. 16 The spread of education. 17 Henry Jackson. 18 Charles Waldstein. 19 Winifred Lamb.

IX

CONTRIBUTORS Mary Beard

Fellow of Newnham College and University Lecturer in Classics, University of Cambridge

Claire Breay

Curator of Manuscripts, British Library

John Crook

Emeritus Professor of Ancient History, University of Cambridge

Pat Easterling

Regius Professor of Greek, University of Cambridge

David Gill

Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Wales Swansea

Judith Raphaely

Trainee solicitor, Freshfields, London

Joyce Reynolds

Emeritus Reader in Roman Historical Epigraphy, University of Cambridge

Christopher Stray Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Classics, University of Wales Swansea

Robert Todd

Professor of Classics, University of British Columbia

XI

INTRODUCTION The essays in this volume are based on papers given at a Cambridge Philological Society seminar held at Newnham College, Cambridge on 25 May 1996.1 They represent two well-established traditions of academic writing: the investigation by specialists of the history of their own subject, and the exploration of an institution’s history by its members. Both these traditions have had their characteristic weaknesses. The former has suffered from an ignorance of, or lack of interest in, the wider social and cultural contexts of its immediate subject-matter; the latter, from the celebratory piety which has glossed over dispute and kept skeletons firmly locked in their cupboards. Not so in the present volume, whose contributors are either willing, or positively eager, to identify connections without, and skeletons within. In the light of the recent tendency to deprecate local studies as parochial, it may be worth emphasising that subject-matter and analytical scope are two distinct things. To explore the microcosm is not necessarily to see it as an isolated world, or as no more than a monadic reflection of the macrocosm. Individual institutions act as carriers of widely-diffused traditions of knowledge and value (in this case, ‘classical’); but they shape them in their own way. The challenge is to identify the nature and causes of similarity and difference. The question is not whether one writes of, and from, local knowledge, but how. One particular development in the recent history of ‘classics in Cambridge’ deserves to be highlighted, since it bears directly on the subject of this volume. Since 1984, the nature and history of classics have been explored under the auspices of Group X in Part II of the Classical Tripos.2Well down the alphabet from the nineteenth-century Sections (A-E) which are discussed in this volume, Group X was intended as a wild card which transcended their disciplinary boundaries. Some of the flavour of this exercise in postmodern provocation can be caught from its founders’ collaborative squib: Mary Beard and John Henderson, A very short introduction to classics (1995). More recently, Henderson’s Juvenal’s Mayor: the professor who lived on 2d a day (1998) has decon­ structed the stereotyped image of Mayor as a lovable but misguided eccentric: an image which, while containing elements of truth, has functioned to discourage a serious analysis of his work and his motivations. A similar concern underlies Mary Beard’s The invention o f Jane Harrison (1999). But here there is a further twist: the mythicising was begun by the subject herself. Beard reads Harrison’s presentation of herself (notably in her Reminiscences o f a student’s life, 1925) as a tissue of self-aggrandisement masquerading as self-deprecation. The career of Eugénie Strong, in many ways parallel to Harrison’s and in its earlier stages 1

2

The exception is David G ill’s paper, which was written especially for inclusion here. Thanks are due to Gill Sutherland and Pat Easterling of Newnham College for help with organisation, to Colin Austin for advice and help in more than one capacity, and to Paul Cartledge for continuing support. The task of editing was lightened by Frank W albank, who read and com m ented on the entire text. Two o f the essays in this volume (Breay, Raphaely) originated as student dissertations written for this course; on which, see further B eard’s chapter.

xii

INTRODUCTION

linked to it, is used by Beard to show how a different story of Harrison’s life can be told. This theoretically-informed deconstructive agenda is not the only basis for such work. Similar results can be achieved by a straightforward concern to set the record straight, as with Pat Easterling’s recent discussion of Gilbert Murray, which illuminates by the simple, and unfashionable, strategy of taking him seriously as a literary critic.3 Other classical scholars of the late-Victorian era would similarly benefit from a fresh look. Sir Richard Jebb, Regius Professor of Greek, MP and spokesman for culture in several forums both within and without Cambridge, was widely admired in his lifetime. Perhaps because of this, he has sometimes been treated dismissively by later scholars.4 The late-Victorian and Edwardian world to which Jebb, Mayor, Harrison and Strong belonged may now seem ‘all so very different, and so unimaginably long ago’. Yet it is also part of the history - our history - of classical scholarship. And the feeling of a gap not to be bridged needs to be confronted with the cosiness of the local oral tradition in which these same scholars figure. In a curious way, the stereotypes I have been discussing are located at the crossroads of historical distance and institutional proximity. The essays collected in this volume demonstrate, I believe, that this crossroads is a fruitful as well as a dangerous place at which to meet. 3 4

Easterling 1997. Jebb is discussed by Charles Brink in his English classical scholarship ( 1985) 143-8, where he is accused of ‘tasteful floating’ (145). The only other recent discussion of Jebb is Dawe (1990).

I

THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS (1822-1922): HIGH CULTURE AND THE POLITICS OF CURRICULUM

Christopher Stray The present volume represents the first attempt to survey in any detail the organised study of classics in Cambridge.1No claim is made for systematic coverage: the studies collected here derive from their authors’ interests in particular areas within the field. In consequence the chronological coverage in different chapters varies, but it is worth noting that most of the chapters are concerned with the last third of the nineteenth century. This was not only the period in which the Tripos took on the form which it has broadly retained to the present day, but also the point at which Victorian classical scholarship shook off its sense of inferiority to Altertumswissenschaft. These were the last great days of classics as a central element in English high culture. Its leaders were public figures, some (in Cambridge Jebb, Sandys and Ridgeway) receiving knighthoods, while specialisation and the development of an academic career promoted scholarly work of increasing rigour. The orientation of classics was shifting from ‘liberal education’ to ‘learning’, and it was in the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods that the Cambridge form of classics took on its distinctive shape. One of the objects of this introductory essay is to provide an overall chronological framework in which the contributions which follow can be situated. Its end-date marks not only the end of the Tripos’s first century, but the appointment of the third Royal Commission, which led to the setting up of the faculty system in the mid-1920s. The almost complete lack of attention given to the history of the Classical Tripos is surprising.2 The Tripos is, after all, with its opposite number at Oxford, the most 1 Clarke (1959)104-110 is necessarily sparse; Stray (1997a) is a preliminary sketch on which the present essay draws. 2 It is perhaps worth sum m arising the history of the word ‘T ripos’, unique in this sense to Cambridge. In the sixteenth century, candidates for the BA degree were questioned by a selected bachelor who sat on a three-legged stool. Later, he cam e to be known as ‘T ripos’ or ‘Mr T ripos’. Still later, the word ‘T ripos’ was applied first to his speeches, and then to the facetious Latin and Greek verses printed on the back of the list of Figure 1. The Classical Tripos r . The only known visual representation: successful candidates in the degree exam ination. Thence it passed to a drawing by John Lewis Roget, from his the exam ination itself. See W ordsworth ( 1877) 16-21 . A Cambridge Scrapbook, Macmillan 1859.

2

CHRISTOPHER STRAY

prestigious classical honours course in Britain. These courses played a central part in two crucial and related processes in Victorian Britain: the transmission of culture and the reproduction of social élites. Each year they received cohorts of boys - largely from the public schools, whose curricula were dominated by classics throughout the century; each year they sent out cohorts of men who went on to positions in the Church, the law, and politics, and later in the expanding civil service at home and abroad. In a period when the study of classical antiquity lay at the heart of English high culture, the curricula and syllabuses of Literae Humaniores and the Tripos provided institutional maps of classics, albeit on rather different projections. Three phases are clearly discernible in the first century of the Tripos’s history. From its foundation in 1822 until 1854 it was tied to the Mathematical Tripos; students could read classics only after passing in mathematics at a high level. In 1854 classics was freed from this tie, but other humanities honours courses were founded which eventually challenged its authority and its recruitment. In 1879 it was reorganised into the bipartite pattern which survives today. Part I represented traditional amateur learning, Part II the specialised knowledge of the professional scholar, fragmented but covering a wide range and going beyond language and literature. Even this brief sketch raises questions: about the content and structure of the classical curriculum; relations between classics and other subjects; and the ideological tension between gentlemanly amateurism and professional scholarship. Something will be said about these issues as they arise in different phases.

I Sequential subordination, 1822-1854 The Tripos was established in 1822 after a campaign led by Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity College, and the first examination was held in 1824. Why was it set up at just this point? Several other developments will have made it seem increasingly anomalous that the University had no degree examination in classics. By this time the Oxford examination in Uteris humanioribus was well established. Sixth formers at the reformed public schools were working to an increasingly high linguistic standard, the most remarkable case being that of Thomas Brancker, who in 1831 won the Ireland Scholarship at Oxford (defeating Gladstone amongst others) while still in the Shrewsbury sixth form. The expansion of the reformed public schools was linked to the growth of an urban bourgeoisie concerned to maintain social distance from its presumed inferiors. The establishment of classical examinations, at a time when entry rates to the ancient universities had been rising fast for several years, can be related to this enlarged intake. Classics was the preferred knowledge of gentlemen and of those who wanted their sons to be gentlemen. But what made it valued -its capacity to form the mind and mould the spirit - also made it dangerous knowledge. The hijacking of Roman exempla by the French revolutionaries had made that very clear - hence, in part, the shift to Hellenism in the late eighteenth

THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS

3

century.3 The foundation of the Tripos can thus be seen as part of the conservative reaction to the French Enlightenment. Cambridge scholarship at this time was typified by the editions of Greek plays produced by Dobree, Monk and Blomfield; all three being followers of Porson, whose close textual analysis remained a powerful exemplar of the Cambridge style. The university prizes were prestigious and lucrative, but they were confined to composition in Latin and Greek, and the German scholarship whose published results had been widely available in Britain since the end of the Continental Blockade in 1816 offered a powerful alternative vision both to the compositional tradition and to the narrowly linguistic style of the Porsonians.4 The contrasting styles are visible in the two classical journals edited in Cambridge in the 1820s and 1830s. The final issue of the Porsonian Museum Criticum appeared in 1826, a victim of the elevation of its editors Monk and Blomfield to bishoprics. In it they announced that a successor journal was hoped for from other hands; and this duly appeared in 1831 as the Philological Museum. But this Museum was a different animal altogether: a platform for the Germanic historical philology of the Liberal Anglicans Julius Hare and Connop Thirlwall.5 They, too, were soon lost to scholarship when they were given ecclesiastical positions. But while Hare went to a rich family living, Thirlwall was given the bishopric of St Davids only after being expelled from Trinity for publishing an attack on compulsory chapel attendance.6 The new philology was dangerous knowledge, and though seized on by Anglicans as a weapon with which the Word of God might be defended, eventually proved a corrosive of traditional belief.7 Both preferment and expulsion are significant. If the latter demonstrates that philology was a double-edged sword, the former reminds us that Oxford and Cambridge were the educational wings of the Established Church. Their teachers had no academic career structure to move through, the holders of chairs often being absentees who gave no lectures. A college fellow would normally hope to move to one of the 780 or so rural livings in the gift of the colleges: Hare’s departure for the living of Hurstmonceux was thus completely ordinary. And while some men continued to pursue their scholarly interests, many will have concentrated on pastoral duties and theology after taking up their livings. Not one of the works published by Hare after leaving Cambridge deals with the classical philology which had so occupied him at Trinity. 3

The best-known exam ples are the paintings of David and Delacroix. For a good discussion of these and other revolutionary uses of the antique, see W arner (1985). The link with exam inations is explored by

4

German classical philology em erged from a matrix of theological herm eneutics and retained a sense of mission; the totalising ambitions of F.A. W o lfs Altertum sw issenschaft also envisioned a breadth of coverage far beyond the concerns of the Porsonians. See Grafton (1983). Brink (1985) 112 refers to the Classical Journal (1810-29) as the M useum Criticum 's ‘immediate successor’. It would be m ore accurate to say that it was a com petitor which outlived the M useum Criticum (though not for long). A bishopric was a recognised prize at this time for an Anglican Greek scholar: Stray (1998a) 39, 41. But preferment to this minor see in ‘Little England beyond W ales’ might also be seen as a kind of interior exile. Burrow (1955).

R o th b latt (1971).

5

6 7

4

CHRISTOPHER STRAY

The man who expelled Thirlwall, Christopher Wordsworth, was also the prime mover behind the foundation of the Tripos. This glimpse of the disciplinary fist in the cultural glove brings us back to the element of danger and control mentioned above. The examination offered a powerful instrument of control which shaped both knowledge and knower through its regulation of eligible subject matter and the finely graded mechanism of the mark. We should notice here a clear contrast between Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford discouraged direct competition between individuals - in theory everyone could gain a First - whereas Cambridge was much more directly competitive. Hence the numerical order introduced in mathematics - Senior Wrangler, second, third, fourth Wranglers etc. - followed in the Classical Tripos by Senior (etc.) Classics. There were even titles for the lowest scorers: the Wooden Spoon in mathematics, the Wedge in classics.8 The powerful and long-established mathematical tradition at Cambridge adequately explains this stress on competition and marking (similar moves at Oxford in the 1820s were led by the mathematicians there).9 It also influenced the shape taken by the new Tripos, since Wordsworth’s original proposals were watered down so that the mathe­ maticians would not block them. He had wanted original composition included in an examination taken after the Mathematical Tripos which would be compulsory except for the top ten Wranglers. The proposal approved in 1822, however, was for an entirely voluntary examination consisting of translation to and from Latin and Greek, with no historical papers and no original composition. This last was apparently regarded as being beyond the powers of those who had concentrated on mathematics. Wordsworth, Hare and Thirlwall were all fellows of Trinity, which in the 1780s had overtaken St John’s as the largest college in the university. Trinity had been conducting rigorous classical examinations for its fellowships since the turn of the century, and in a sense the Tripos was an extension of a college procedure to the whole University.10The rising rates of matriculation in the 1820s may have relaxed intercollegiate tensions to some extent, and probably facilitated the introduction of the new Tripos. Nevertheless it seems likely that St John’s, which was noted for mathematics rather than classics, suspected that the Tripos proposals were a Trinity plot. 11 The sequential tie between classics and mathematics invites speculation: did math­ ematical thinking influence the style of classical scholarship? The Porsonian style, with its glorification of problem-solving within a delimited area, had an affinity with math­ ematics, as learnt in Cambridge; the Oxford Greats style was very different. And of 8

The ‘W edge’ was nam ed for the unfortunate who was placed last in the first Tripos exam ination, Hensleigh W edgwood (later a keen am ateur philologist). C f note 32 below. 9 On Cambridge mathematics, see Gascoigne (1989). The M athem atical Tripos will be dealt with in detail in W arwick (forthcoming). 10 College exam inations for students, however, had been pioneered in the mid-1760s by St John's on the initative of its new master, W illiam Powell. 11 On the relative sizes, and perform ances, of Trinity and St. John’s see Venn (1908); W instanley (1935)185-7; on Trinity exam inations, ibid., 315. The surge in matriculation levels after the Napoleonic Wars is graphically portrayed in Venn (1930).

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5

course those who sat for the Tripos came to it from an exhaustive course of mathematics. But the influence was reciprocal, since from the mid-1820s on, many of those who took maths had their sights set on the new Classical Tripos which lay beyond. The mathematics dons were in effect teaching mixed-ability classes; and accordingly, in the later 1820s they began to rewrite and simplify their textbooks.12 In 1849 the mathematical entry requirement was lowered, and an ancient history paper was introduced. This met a long-standing complaint. In 1836 Christopher Wordsworth junior had complained that the Tripos focused unduly on the manner, rather than the matter, of the ancient authors.13 As this suggests, the historical and philological emphasis of the Philological Museum represented a road not taken. Not until the 1880s would comparative philology and ancient history be given secure homes in the curriculum.14

II Autonomy and plurality, 1854-79 In 1854 the Tripos was finally detached from its elder mathematical sibling. Like many other changes, including the introduction of triposes in law, theology and moral sciences, this resulted from the recommendations of the 1850 Royal Commissions on the ancient universities. The new honours courses in the mid-1850s at first attracted hardly any students; nevertheless their mere existence affected both the authority and the definition of classics. The old sequential pattern was replaced by an array of courses from which students could choose.15 This general unsettling of tradition encouraged renewed calls for reform of the Classical Tripos, and in particular for the downgrading of composition and for increased attention to ancient history. There is a direct parallel in the concern among Oxford classicists, at much the same time, that the new modern history course would sweep the board unless Literae Humaniores was made less linguistic; hence the switch made in 1850 to the two-part sequence which persists today: a linguistic and literary course (Honour Moderations), followed by the philosophical and historical emphasis of Literae Humaniores.16 12 This is a preliminary conclusion derived from a com parison of exam ination regulations and textbook publishing. Nothing has been written directly on the point, but cf. W illiam s (1991). 13 On the 1849 changes, see W instanley (1940) 216-18. W ordsw orth’s com plaint was m ade in a letter to the Cambridge Chronicle: the text is in Lam beth Palace Library, MS 2141.200. He had been appointed Public O rator on 4 February, but on 26 April resigned to becom e a (not very successful) headm aster of Harrow. 14 The reform s of the 1870s and 1880s are docum ented in W instanley (1940) 216-18. 15 The new courses were in M oral Sciences and in Natural Sciences (both first exam ined in 1851); followed by Theology (1856), Law (1858), Law and History (1870), History (1875), Semitic Languages (1878), Indian languages (1879), M edieval and Modern Languages (1886), M echanical Sciences (1894) and Oriental Languages (1895). 16 This point is made by Oswyn M urray in his draft chapter on ancient history for the H istory o f the University o f Oxford, VII, 1870-1914 (Murray (2000)), which he kindly allowed me to inspect. See in general the chapter on ‘Pattison’s O xford’ in Sparrow (1967) 62-104.

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In the late 1860s, a time when reform was in the air nationally and the academic liberals were very active in politics, there was a flurry of pamphlets and flysheets on curriculum reform. Farrar’s Essays on a Liberal Education, which appeared in 1867, included a powerful dissection of the arguments in favour of classical education by Henry Sidgwick, who also contributed to the local battle of the flysheets.17 In his own chapter, Farrar attacked the continuing emphasis on verse composition in the public schools. At Cambridge, W.G. Clark and Robert Burn argued that this had distorted the Tripos curriculum; the university prizes and medals sufficiently rewarded such skills, and the Tripos itself should be reoriented in newer directions.18 Another bone of contention was the status of ancient history. The conservative Trinity don Augustus Vansittart described this as bringing ‘an alien and disturbing element into our great Classical examination’. He also objected to the inclusion of questions on ancient philosophy, for which, he suggested, the new Moral Sciences Tripos was a more suitable home.19 These debates often drew on the contrast with Greats; a comparison which was to be expected, since the Royal Commissions on Oxford and Cambridge had proceeded in parallel, initiating, in effect, a pair of linked discussions on the curriculum and organisation of higher education. In his flysheet, Vansittart wrote: ‘Let there be two schools - Oxford classics (philosophical) and Cambridge classics (philological).’ His argument was that anyone who wanted a broader-based curriculum should go to Oxford for it rather than trying to introduce it to Cambridge. The comparison persisted into the later nineteenth century, and was echoed in Housman’s notorious thumbnail sketch in his 1911 inaugural: Cambridge scholarship simply meant scholarship with no nonsense about it; Oxford scholarship embodied an erroneous tendency to import literary taste into the study of texts. Housman was referring to the middle years of the nineteenth century, as was J.P. Postgate when he wrote in the Classical Review in 1901: ‘Cambridge was as ever ready with a certain contempt for the inaccurate freedom of Oxford as Oxford for the stiff grammatical precision of Cambridge.’ Postgate added diplomatically: ‘Each has learned from the other; and accuracy is as much honoured at Oxford as style can be at Cambridge.’20 In his own flysheet, Sidgwick summarised Vansittart’s argument thus: ‘If we endeavour to ascertain that men have understood and reflected upon the authors which they have read, we are mixing up with classics something which is not classics.’ Sidgwick’s discussion is notable both for this focus on the idea of the subject and for the way it refers to ‘Classics’ tout simple. He begins, for example, by asking ‘whether classics alone can form a satisfactory basis of education’. He goes on to reject the view 17 The original title of Farrar’s book was Essays on a classical education. On Sidgwick see ch. II of this volume. 18 W.G. Clark and R. Burn, 26 April 1866. Cambridge University Library, CUR 28.7.18. 19 A.A. Vansittart, 16 May 1866. Cambridge University Library, CUR 28.7.20. 20 Housman (1969) 25-6. Postgate (1901) 2 n.2. For a com parison by the young John Conington in 1843 when he was at Rugby, see Conington (1872) I xviii.

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that ‘“Classics” and ancient thought are things naturally distinct’. 21 Sidgwick may have won the argument, but university politics was not a rational activity, and the insertion of history and philosophy into the Tripos continued to be bitterly resisted. For the conservatives, classics was the prime instrument of liberal education, and as such it was a linguistic and literary training in gentlemanly style rather than in learning facts about the ancient world. But at Cambridge this was defined as the pursuit of accurate linguistic knowledge and a sense of verbal style. This was the ‘pure scholarship’ which F.A. Paley in an 1868 pamphlet on the Tripos glossed as ‘accurate verbal scholarship’. Paley’s position is evident from his peroration: ‘What is classical scholarship? Is it a knowledge of the ancient authors, or only a smartness and quickness in construing and composing?’22 A generation before this, J.W. Blakesley had suggested that the typical product of the Tripos was ‘a hard-headed philologer’. That might suggest a theoretical knowledge of language, but what was meant was in fact an accurate and detailed command of the nuances of literary language, evidenced in both writing and translating Latin and G reek.23 The proliferation of honours courses from the 1850s onwards brought with it new possibilities and problems. Competition was in practice limited for several decades, since recruitment to most of the new Triposes was very low. In some years, the Moral Sciences Tripos had no candidates at all. The Natural Sciences Tripos, on the other hand, increasingly attracted students away from the jewel in Cambridge’s crown and the oldest of all its courses, the Mathematical Tripos. The broadened scope of the Classical Tripos in the 1880s was perhaps more extensive than any other. Because of this, it raised questions of overlap and of choice. If one studied philosophy, it could be approached from Classics (Part II) or from Moral Science. In Oxford, the question was resolved by the incorporation of philosophy within Greats; in Cambridge, the horns of the dilemma were kept separate. In the next essay, Robert Todd investigates the dilemma by looking at the career and writing of Henry Sidgwick. Sidgwick was perhaps the most important single figure in the history of the University in the second half of the nineteenth century. Unable to maintain adherence to the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church, which was until 1871 a condition of the holding of almost all college fellowships, he resigned his Trinity fellowship in 1869. He became then, and remained until his death in 1900, a symbol of intellectual honesty and moral aspiration in the University. Sidgwick went through the Classical Tripos in the late 1850s, but in the following decade, his attention shifted to Moral Sciences. Why he did this, and how this was related to his views on the teaching of philosophy, is the subject of Robert Todd’s essay.

21 [H. Sidgwick], flysheet, n.d. [late October 1866]. Cam bridge University Library, CUR 28.7.27. ‘The classics’ was the usual form; though ‘classics’ had been used to denote subject courses and exam inations in the University o f London since the late 1830s. 22 [Paley] (1868) 15. 23 Blakesley (1845).

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CHRISTOPHER STRAY

The emphasis on dexterity and speed in Cambridge stemmed from the influence of the mathematical exams, where manipulation and problem-solving were much prized. In some quarters, the increasing dominance of examinations was viewed with suspicion. Thus J.R. Seeley declared that Cambridge was like a country invaded by the Sphinx - men thought of nothing else but how to answer its questions.24 In Oxford too examinations were becoming central to university life, but the direct comparison of individuals continued to be resisted. This may explain why private coaching took hold more weakly in Oxford than in Cambridge.25 The 1840s and 1850s witnessed yet more classical journals which collapsed after a few years: the Classical Museum in 1850, the Journal o f Sacred and Classical Philology in 1859. An academic community able to support such publications was still lacking. The crucial shift which was to lay the foundations for such a community took place between the mid-1850s and the mid-1880s, when able men began to look outside the Church for their careers. The beginnings of what we would recognise as academic organisation - societies, journals, specialisation and a career hierarchy - followed the intervention of the state, but were facilitated by the decline of religious faith.26

Ill Liberal learning, 1879-1914 The second Royal Commission (1872) was officially concerned with university finance, but this raised fundamental issues of university organisation. By the time it reported in 1874, however, the debates of the late 1860s had already led to changes in the Tripos. The ‘middle’ or ‘intermediate’ Tripos of the 1870s was created by leavening the mass of linguistic examinations with papers on history and philology. This change was, however, soon overtaken by pressure from the Headmasters’ Conference for the division of Triposes, so that students could take more than one subject.27 The conflict between advocates of [lingustic] ‘scholarship’ and [wider] ‘learning’ led to a compromise similar to that of the 1820s. Liberal education and ‘pure scholarship’ were represented in the new Part I, which was entirely linguistic and literary and which itself gave access to a degree. Part II was optional, open only to those who had passed Part I, and was divided into five Sections: literature, philosophy, history, archaeology and comparative philology. Of these, archaeology constituted the most obvious extension of the subject coverage in the curriculum. It became popular among women students, who were in general relatively ill-equipped to handle the traditional linguistic core of 24 Seeley (1867). 25 A point made by M ark Curthoys: see Curthoys (1998). 26 On the transition, see Haig (1986). The oldest British classical journal to survive today, the Journal o f Hellenic Studies, was founded in 1880. The Journal o f Philology, founded in 1868, ceased publication in 1920 after the Cambridge Philological Society cancelled its block subscription. (The Journal was published by Macmillan, who as John Crook and Joyce Reynolds record (below, eh. VIII), were also a leading supporter of the Greek and Latin Book Club. This may explain why that support was withdrawn at the end of 1920.) 27 For more detail, see Stray (1998b).

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the Tripos.28 This could be seen as the beginning of a brave new world; especially when we remember that in the 1870s, after the repeal of the Test Acts and the foundation of Girton and Newnham, women and dissenters had acquired access to Cambridge classics.29 But the late-Victorian period is better seen as a transitional one in which pure scholarship and the world of the Anglican bachelor male remained dominant despite the inroads made by new students and new knowledge. Until 1895, for example, the literature course in Part II, unlike the other four Sections, was compulsory. The co­ ordination of teaching on an intercollegiate basis, pioneered by the Trinity tutors in the 1860s, was well developed by 1903, when Cornford urged in his pamphlet The Cambridge classical course. An essay in anticipation o f further reform (1903)that it should be improved and extended. Five years later Cornford produced his elegant satire Microcosmographia academica, a study of academic politics based on a decade of observation and involvement.30 Its lessons could easily be applied to the political history of the Tripos, which in the 1890s had become bogged down as declining Part II numbers led to reformist proposals which were defeated.31 The reforms which followed the reports of the three Royal Commissions can be seen as forward lurches in a sequence of changes which were typically much slower and more clogged, taking place as they did in an arena of institutional politics where vested interests were many and deeply entrenched, and where decision-making structures made it very difficult to effect rapid change. The issue of ‘Compulsory Greek’ illustrates the point vividly. The issue was first raised in 1870, and debated on several occasions; on each occasion those who wished to abolish the requirement were defeated. By the 1900s it had become clear that Compulsory Greek was, in the long run, doomed; nevertheless in the last large-scale debate, in 1903, its supporters again outvoted the abolitionists. Only after the First World War, in 1919, was the issue laid to rest which had first been raised almost fifty years before. The other great issue of the period was ‘the woman question’: the admission of women to membership of the University. They had first appeared at the end of the 1860s, and by 1882 were allowed not only to take Tripos examinations, but to have their results published - separately, but in a way which allowed of direct comparison with those of the men. A university long dominated by math­ ematics, where the fine-tuned mechanism of the mark ruled supreme, and the order of intellectual merit was venerated, found room for the public assessment of those whom the majority regarded as lesser mortals. (It had, after all, long been content to rank, right down to the Wooden Spoon and the Wedge, lesser mortals who happened to be male.)32 28 W om en had begun to sit Tripos exam inations inform ally in 1873. 29 The T est Acts were repealed in 1871; Girton and N ewnham were founded in 1869 and 1873 respectively. 30 The anonym ous M icrocosmographia academica (1908) was reprinted under C ornford’s nam e in 1922. Gordon Johnson has added a useful introduction on its historical context in his edition: Johnson (1994). 31 Stray (1998b). 32 The W ooden Spoon: the lowest scorer in the Mathem atical Tripos; on degree day, presented with a giant spoon fashioned from an oar. The W edge: the equivalent in the Classical Tripos. The eponym ous first failure was Hensleigh W edgwood (1824), later, ironically, of some distinction as a philologist. His son Ernest was W ooden Spoon in 1860, thus com pleting a rem arkable double score for the family.

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These issues - Greek and women - were the twin foci of late nineteenth-century debate in Cambridge, as they were in Oxford, and indeed in Britain in general. For they raised, and symbolised, larger questions about the role of the ancient universities in national life. The world was changing. The first industrial nation was being overtaken by the younger, but fast-maturing economies of the Continent and the New World; Britain was becoming an urban-centred society in which citizenship was being extended to the working classes and to women. The long-standing deference shown to the Anglican bachelor enclaves of Oxford and Cambridge was being eroded, at a time when their economic independence was threatened by an agricultural depression which reduced the rural rents on which the colleges relied for their income. The prospect of state assistance, and hence state interference, loomed on the horizon. In this situation, ‘Compulsory Greek’ became a ‘Hindenburg Line of Culture’: a symbol of the universities’ freedom to maintain compulsion, and to keep at bay a new world in which women might be full members.33 These twin issues are the subjects of the chapters by Claire Breay and Judith Raphaely. The bases of an academic career had begun to be laid, since the graduates who had previously gone into the Church or into schoolmastering now had fellowships to compete for. But they were mostly six-year posts, and many were forced to turn to teaching, inspecting or examining when their fellowships expired. Indeed some took on extra work, such as extension lecturing, even before this. Fellowship income had been driven down by the agricultural recession, from around £300 in the late 1870s to about £80 in the early 1890s.34 Recruitment to the Tripos forms a very clear pattern: most of the men took Part I and then their degree; very few bothered to go on to Part II. In 1887, for example, over 110 candidates sat the Part I examination, while Part II attracted only eleven. In this period, the recruitment of men to Part II actually halved; the cause of much alarm in the 1890s, when abortive proposals were made to divide the Tripos into three parts.35 The root cause lay in the subversion of the University’s reforms by the public schools. Let off lightly by their own Royal Commission in the 1860s, they continued to send up boys who had learned traditional literary classics, practised more of the same in Part I and then left - as gentlemen rather than scholars.36 The earlier debates on the comparison of individuals were revived and sharpened in the 1870s and 1880s when female students appeared in Cambridge, and the ideology 33 The point was made, briefly but effectively, in Rothblatt (1968) 252-4. 34 J.W. H eadlam (fellow o f K ing’s 1890-6) m arried in 1893 and thenceforward had to support his wife. He took on a variety of teaching and inspecting jobs and in 1902 was appointed to a perm anent position in the Board o f Education. As a result, the talents revealed in his Election by lot in Athens (1891) were lost to classical scholarship. 35 The statistics of candidates are taken from the Cambridge University calendar fo r the year 1906-1907 (1906). Some of the figures are tabulated and analysed by Breay (1991). 36 The 1861 C om m ission’s official rem it was to investigate the nine leading schools, but it also looked at several other schools. The H eadm asters’ Conference was founded in 1869 to resist proposals for state intervention in endowed secondary schools. It began life as a forum for the schools not investigated by the 1861 Com m ission, but soon becam e a talking-shop for the public-school com m unity as a whole.

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of competition can be seen clashing with the powerful feeling that ladies did not belong to the public sphere. In 1881, for example, Benjamin Kennedy, the Regius Professor of Greek, in supporting a motion for the admission of women to University exami­ nations, argued for ‘free intellectual competition between the sexes’ then added ‘but without personal competition’.37 Women sat the examinations but separately - for example, in Kennedy’s drawing-room. But their results were published, and increasingly, in a way which made it possible to compare their achievements with those of the men. The outstanding triumph was that of Agnata Ramsay in 1887, the year used as an example above. The published results show that she was the only candidate in the first division of the First Class. What makes her triumph all the more striking is that this was the Part I examination - the literary bulwark of the male world of ‘pure scholarship’. The pattern of female recruitment was, however, very different, as Claire Breay demonstrates in her chapter. The numbers were much smaller, but propor­ tionately women were much more likely to go on to Part II, and their entry-rate in this period doubled. The reorganisation of the Tripos led to the recruitment of Charles Waldstein and William Ridgeway to teach art and archaeology. The story of Waldstein’s arrival, and of the development of Section D (archaeology), is told in Mary Beard’s essay. Waldstein was also heavily involved in the foundation and running of the Greek Play - the subject of Pat Easterling’s chapter. He acted as stage-manager for the first production in 1882, and trained the actors in later productions. Here, from 1882, was an institution which had the potential to bring together the students of language, literature, history and archaeology through collaboration in a Gesamtkunstwerk. As Pat Easterling shows in her account of the Play, it was a multi-functional event, at once an effort at the dramatic re-creation of ancient literature and a local social event at which regional and metropolitan cultural élites could see and be seen. The moving spirit in its early years, choosing plays, training actors, directing performances, was the exotic figure of Charles Waldstein, born in New York of a central European Jewish family, educated at Columbia and Heidelberg. Brought to Cambridge to teach courses on Greek art in 1880, he soon became a mainstay of the archaeology teaching in Part II of the Tripos. The division of the Tripos into two parts, which became effective in 1881-2, involved the setting up of a range of specialist courses, all of which (except that in literature and criticism, the ‘traditional’ course) were optional. The staging of the first Play in 1882 was in a sense a natural concomitant of this broadening of the classical curriculum beyond the linguistic analysis of texts. Of the other courses offered, ancient history and philosophy (Sections B and C) had in a sense long been there in posse, represented by the ancient writers, and in the case of the philosophers, by a lineage of scholars based in Trinity College: Julius Hare, W.H. Thompson, Henry Jackson, Richard Archer-Hind. ‘Language’ (Section E) drew on the expanding field of comparative philology, imported from Germany and Denmark in the 1820s and by the 37

Reported in Cambridge Review, 16 February 1881, 169.

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1880s well established. But Section D (archaeology) was newer and - like Waldstein - exotic. The publicity given to Schliemann’s excavations in Greece, the recent foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (1880), the campaign for the establishment of a British archaeological school in Athens (founded in 1886) all these played a part. In her discussion of Section D, Mary Beard shows how such cultural potential was realised institutionally in courses, teaching and examinations. The 1880s and ’90s witnessed not only the broadening of the curriculum and the introduction of specialised courses, but also the ongoing financial crisis mentioned above. At a time when money was not only short, but very unevenly spread, Henry Sidgwick and his friends gave generously to fund individuals and posts. Charles Waldstein’s initial lectures were given in his college rooms; subsequently a year’s full employment was funded by Sidgwick’s friend Henry Bradshaw of King’s College. After his marriage to Eleanor Balfour, Sidgwick was also able to draw on her financial resources. There is an irony in the situation: the women who were (until 1948) denied full membership of the University nevertheless found their contributions to its work welcomed. The career of Winifred Lamb is a case in point. The daughter of a wealthy man, she was encouraged by Sydney Cockerell to become Honorary Curator at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Cockerell had a keen eye for both talent and money, and knew that in Lamb he had found someone who had not only the knowledge and commitment to develop the Greek and Roman collections of the museum, but also the financial resources and connections to buy objects and the cases to exhibit them in. David Gill’s essay demonstrates this in detail, following Lamb’s career and her nurturing of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s classical holdings. The Museum of Classical Archaeology began as a division of the Fitzwilliam, but was separated in 1911.38 Like the Greek Play, it represented an institutional sector which developed as a concomitant of the broadening and reorganisation of the classical curriculum in the later nineteenth century. Another related development was the growth of an academic community. The centres of social life in a residential collegiate university were of course the colleges themselves, but since the reforms of the 1880s, supracollegiate structures had begun to emerge. Amid the large numbers of college tutors whose daily routine was based on the setting, marking and discussion of trans­ lations and compositions, there emerged a smaller group of scholars who had university positions, gave lectures open to members of all the colleges, and saw their task less as the transmission of the eternal values enshrined in classical authors than as the exploration of an ancient world which was still mysterious and which extended well beyond the margins of the literary text.39 A basis for academic discussion at university level had been established in 1868 by the foundation of the Cambridge Philological Society. At much the same time, the 38 Beard (1993). 39 In some cases - Harrison, Frazer, Verrall - scholarly work was driven by a resistance to conventional Christianity.

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promotion of lectures in Trinity College open to members of other colleges had pointed the way to an intercollegiate organisation of teaching. (Here again, Sidgwick was an influential figure; he occupied a Praelectorship, one of the few college posts geared to extra-collegiate teaching.) By the early 1900s, progress had been made in this direction, though the more radical reformers felt it was inadequate. In his essay on the Cambridge classical course (1903), Francis Cornford pointed out that it was quite possible for several different colleges to provide simultaneous lecture courses on exactly the same subject. His point was sharpened by the history of financial shortages which had hampered the expansion of supracollegiate teaching and organisation.40 The impact of agricultural depression on the colleges’ rural rents had made it impossible to secure funding for posts, buildings and books. The Chair of Ancient History was founded only in 1898; those of Comparative Philology and Classical Archaeology not until 1931. In this situation, the Greek and Latin Book Club might be seen not only as a response to the perceived need to promote discussion between specialists within classics, but also as a way of mitigating the expense of book-buying, at a time when scholars tended to use their own libraries more than is the case nowadays. The beginnings of the Club are unrecorded, but surely postdate the division of the Tripos and are most likely to belong to the 1890s. Book clubs had been in existence in Cambridge for over a century. Both Trinity and St John’s had their own clubs dating from the early nineteenth century (St Johns 1800, Trinity 1835), and these in turn were predated by town clubs founded by radicals in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1790s - the era of the Corresponding Societies.41 As John Crook and Joyce Reynolds make clear, the Greek and Latin Book Club also served a social function, and its meetings are remembered with nostalgia. The Faculty of Classics, it should not be forgotten, dates only from the mid-1920s; even in the 1950s its Secretary’s records amounted to little more than a card file. The Club’s foundation was surely prompted by the realisation that the scholarly literature was becoming not only larger, but also more specialised. It was set up to promote dialogue, and it is appropriate that its history is told here in a dialogue between two of its members.

Conclusion The history of the Tripos offers a case-study in the appropriation of antiquity: making the past one’s own. But whose own? As we have seen, both property and propriety were subject to dispute in the nineteenth-century history of the Tripos. Its first two 40 It should be rem em bered that much of the funding of university posts had been achieved through the extraction of money from colleges, usually after the intervention of Royal Com m issions (1850, 1872). 41 St Johns held a relatively large proportion of poorer students, so the econom ic motive may have been dominant. In the case of the Trinity club, we might suspect a concern to preserve the influence of Julius Hare and Connop Thirlwall, who had recently left the college. (The secretary was H are’s pupil W.H. Thompson, later to becom e Regius Professor of Greek.)

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phases were pervaded by concerns with purity and danger. To conservative Anglicans, the narrowness of ‘pure scholarship’ at least made it safe, whereas a broader, more socially responsive classics might be dangerous in the wrong hands. In the third phase, as the new world of professionalising academics slowly emerged, arguments over primary ends gave way to the less public world of method and evidence. What ensued was a competent but dull professionalism - the ‘technique’ dissociated from ‘humanism’ which E.R. Dodds confronted in his Oxford inaugural lecture of 1936.42 The cultural high ground once occupied by late-Victorian Hellenism was captured by F.R. Leavis and the Scrutiny group.43 Compulsory Greek was replaced by Compulsory Latin, cultural breadth by disciplinary rigour, in the forty years after the First World War. Hardly touched on in the present volume, this too will in time surely emerge from the shadow of proximity to be explored by classicists.44

42 Dodds (1936). I have benefited from reading an unpublished paper on ‘Humanism and technique in classical scholarship’ by Robert B. Todd. 43 See M ulhem (1979). 44 A preliminary survey is attem pted in Stray (1998a) 271-97.

II

HENRY SIDGWICK, CAMBRIDGE CLASSICS, AND THE STUDY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY: THE DECISIVE YEARS (1866-9)'

Robert B. Todd ... in the main, ancient philosophy, on the one hand and general philosophy and the history of modem philosophy, on the other, are in almost watertight compartments ... [this fact] has never ceased to astonish and to shock me. Broad (1957) 16 The years 1866-9 were decisive for the future not only of Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) and the Cambridge Classical Tripos, but also for the study of ancient philosophy2 in the University. This chapter will first define the status of all three in the year 1866; then analyse the events of 1866-9, with particular reference to Sidgwick’s intellectual development; and finally consider briefly the legacy of this cmcial triennium. Sidgwick’s early career, and the history of the Classical Tripos in the 1860s, have been explored elsewhere.3 This essay will for the first time suggest that within this context lie the remote origins of a longlasting cultural divide at Cambridge between ancient philosophy and general philosophy.4

7. 1866: an unstable establishment Henry Sidgwick became a Fellow of Trinity College, and Tutor in Classics, in 1859, after taking an outstanding degree as 1st Classic and 33rd Wrangler, and winning 1 For a full bibliography of Sidgw ick’s works, see Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 616-22 and Schneewind (1977)424-32. In my notes, the abbreviation ‘F S ’ is used for ‘flysheet’ (seen. 2 \); D NB is the D ictionary o f national biography. 2 I shall use this label instead of ‘Greek philosophy’, to avoid excluding Rom an philosophy, and because ‘G reek’ inevitably fails to carry the required linguistic sense. 3 On Sidgwick see Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) chs. II-IV , Leavis (1947), Rothblatt (1968) 133-43 and 217-19, and Schneewind (1977) 13-62; on the reform of the Classical Tripos see W instanley (1947) 209-23, and C.A. Stray in this volume. 4 There is no account of the study of ancient philosophy at Cambridge in the nineteenth century. Sidgwick (1876) discussed it briefly; Turner (1981) 373 and 381 has only sketchy rem arks, and (like ‘Stopper’ in his 1981 review article) regards Oxford as the exclusive centre of such studies in Victorian Britain. As for developm ents at Cam bridge in the very recent past, O ’Brien (1993) 16 suggests that they might provide interesting material for a future historian.

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Figure 2. Henry Sidgwick. Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1883 until his death in 1900. The intellectual hero of late Victorian Cambridge, and a leading liberal reform er in university politics. Reproduced by perm ission of the M aster and Fellow s of Trinity College, Cam bridge.

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several major prizes.5 He seemed marked as a future Regius Professor of Greek. Yet in March 1865 he was appointed an examiner for the Moral Sciences Tripos, and in May 1866 joined the Board of Moral Sciences Studies.6 His time as an ‘Apostle’, and his participation in the circle of Cambridge fellows surrounding the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy, John Grote (1813-66), had made him into a moral philosopher.7 In the next three years he would straddle the academic worlds of classics and philosophy by contributing to the reform of both the Classical and Moral Sciences Triposes. But he would also continue the intellectual odyssey that, among other things, led to his resignation as a Fellow of Trinity in 1869 on grounds of conscience, and in 1874 to the composition of his philosophical masterwork, The methods o f ethics. Cambridge classics in 1866 was virtually unchanged from the system that had been investigated in 1850-1 by the Royal Commissioners.8 Apart from the removal in 1854 of the requirement that the Mathematical Tripos precede the Classical to ensure a degree,9 and the inclusion (since 1849) of a paper on ancient history, tl\e Classical Tripos remained essentially an exercise in translation and composition (both prose and verse), without any demand that texts be interpreted. It required ‘not knowledge, but skill. At best it was a sort of empirical knowledge, wholly confined to the languages of Greek and Latin’.10 Some tutors accepted the Commissioners’ challenge, and urged that requirements in composition be diminished in favour of papers that tested ‘knowledge of the subject-matter’.11 But for the moment Cambridge classics still involved the ‘hard reading’ of texts to sustain what was variously called in that age ‘pure philology’, or simply ‘scholarship’.12 5 On his exceptional abilities in verse com position see Browning (1910) 40; for Sidgw ick’s m em oir of his training at Rugby with T.S. Evans (1816-89) see Sidgwick (1884). 6 See the Minute Book of this Board at ULC, U A M in .V .1 0 fo r4 M a rch 1865, and 10 May 1866. According to Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 38 n. 1 Sidgwick did not form ally transfer to M oral Sciences. He was certainly sufficiently engaged with philosophy by 1866 to consider being a candidate to succeed John Grote as Knightsbridge Professor of M oral Philosophy; see Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 152. 7 See Sidgw ick’s own account (Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 33-8 and 133-8); also Rothblatt (1968) 138-141, using Sidgwick (1889). The ‘Grote C lub’ continued after G rote’s death; see Groenewegen (1995) 110-13. 8 See Parliamentary Papers (1852-3) passim for internal perceptions of the situation at this time. 9 This becam e effective in 1857, and so did not apply to Sidgwick who entered Cam bridge in 1855. He was, however, an accom plished m athem atician, and would have taken the M athem atical Tripos anyway in order to qualify for the m ajor prizes in classics, a requirem ent that rem ained in force until 1869. 10 See W hewell (1850) 25, quoting a recent distinguished graduate, identified in the TCC copy as Lord Lyttelton, i.e., George W illiam Lyttelton (1817-76) of Trinity, joint Senior Classic in 1838. For similar sentiments see Grote (1856) 94—5. 11 This phrase, so crucial in the debates of the late 1860s, seems to have been introduced at Cambridge by the Com m issioners in their first question about the Classical Tripos (.Parliamentary Papers (1852-3) 247). The case for the ‘subject-m atter’ of ancient philosophy was engagingly put by E.M. Cope (.Parliamentary Papers (1852-3) 279) when he claim ed that such studies would ‘cultivate the robuster m ental faculties and supply an antidote to the enervating effects of Latin elegiac verses’. See also Rev. Rowland W illiam s (1810-70) (on whom see DNB XXI 450-3), who lectured on Greek philosophy at K ing’s, at Parliamentary Papers (1852-3) 293. 12 On this and related term inology, com m oner perhaps at Cambridge than elsewhere, see Jocelyn (1996) 90-5.

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Ancient philosophy was not in 1866 an identifiable sub-discipline.13 Plato and Aristotle were read, though perhaps only ‘for the sake of their style’,14 along with the other ‘best authors’ prescribed for the Classical Tripos,15 and also appeared in parts of the capacious Moral Sciences Tripos.16 The Latinist H.A.J. Munro (1819-85),17 who had published on Aristotle in the 1850s, had been a member of the Board of Moral Sciences Studies in the early 1860s. William Hepworth Thompson (1810-86)18 and Edward Meredith Cope (1818-73)19 were the leading students of Greek philosophy, although neither had published extensively, and both were overshadowed from outside academia by George Grote (1794-1871), who produced his Platonic studies in the 1860s. William Whewell (1794-1866), the powerful and influential Master of Trinity, had strongly supported in principle the incorporation of the study of ancient philosophy into the Classical Tripos, but had opposed its introduction until such time as Cambridge scholars published more extensively on the subject.20

2. 1866-9: more change than continuity In 1866 Henry Sidgwick was preoccupied with academic reform. His first publication appeared in October of that year, and was one of the numerous flysheets that circulated between 1866 and 186821 in response to a joint appeal for the reform of the Classical 13 There was an attempt to introduce it into the Classical Tripos in 1849 (see W.H. Thompson at Parliamentary Papers (1852-3) 288), to which Whewell reacted negatively; see the reference at n. 20 below. 14 This rem ark was made in M ozley’s essay of 1863; see Mozley (1863) 47. Henry Jackson (quoted at W instanley (1947) 211) later ridiculed the effect of the ‘pure scholarship’ of this era on the study of philosophy: students ‘read the Phaedrus, but had no Theory of Ideas. They read the Theaetetus, but did not know what Plato was driving at or what Protagoras m eant’. 15 Specifically, the regulations required the translation of ‘passages selected from the best Greek and Latin authors, together with questions arising im m ediately out of such passages’. These ‘best’ authors were not identified. For the underlying ideology see W hewell (1838) 37. The system of ‘taking up books’ (i.e. set books) em ployed at Oxford was often derided as a test o f memory rather than of linguistic knowledge; see H. Thring, Parliamentary Papers (1852-3) 289; cf. W hewell (1850) 213-14. 16 In a book-list dated M ay 1860 provided by the Board of Moral Sciences Studies (UA Min. V. 10) ancient philosophy is represented in the papers on moral philosophy, political philosophy, logic, and mental philosophy. For the latter subject, for exam ple, the Theaetetus and De anima were prescribed. 17 On whom see Naiditch (1991) 142 n. 55. 18 On Thom pson see DNB XIX 708-10; Rothblatt (1968) 212-14; Sandys (1908) 407; and on his scholarship A rcher-H ind (1877). 19 On Cope see M unro (1877) passim. 20 See W hewell (1850) 32-4. W hewell published on Plato and Aristotle in the 1850s. His ‘O f the Platonic theory of ideas’ of 1857 has an adm irable m ethodological credo: ‘It seems not unreasonable to require ... that, so far as we hold Plato’s doctrines to be satisfactorily established, we should be able to produce the argum ents for them, and to refute the arguments against them. These seem reasonable requirem ents of the adherents o f any philosophy, and therefore, of P lato’s ’ (W hewell (1857) 3; his italics). Such requirem ents were not, however, part of the papers on ancient philosophy introduced into the Classical Tripos in 1869; see n. 48. 21 These are preserved in chronological order (as far as possible, since some are undated) in two major collections at ULC: UA, CUR 28.7 (up to 1891), and Cambridge Papers DC 1350. For those cited and quoted see the Bibliography. On several that appeared in 1866 see Markby (1866).

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Tripos issued in May 1866 by two fellows of Trinity, W.G. Clark (1821-78) and Robert Burn (1829-1904).22 Their initiative occurred, perhaps significantly, two months after the death of William Whewell, and his replacement as Master of Trinity by Clark’s close friend, W.H. Thompson.23 Sidgwick entered the debate primarily to support the introduction of the papers on ancient philosophy that had been advocated by Clark and Burn. He rejected any attempt to preserve the system of ‘philological classics’ at Cambridge, and to let Oxford handle ‘philosophical classics’ within Literae humaniores.24 And when Augustus Vansittart (1824-82) argued that ancient philosophy at Cambridge belonged in the Moral Sciences Tripos, and that in the Classical Tripos ‘scholarship should precede philosophy’,25 Sidgwick responded that there was nothing alien to ‘classics’ about the study of ancient philosophy; its subject matter represented no serious threat to ‘pure philology’.26 But in discussing the Classical Tripos Sidgwick was no longer entirely on home territory. Although he was a member of Syndicates that would see approved in April 1869 a reform that introduced into the Classical Tripos two papers on ancient philosophy and rhetoric,27 to be taken by all candidates,28 it was the reform of the Moral Sciences Tripos ‘with which he was even more closely concerned’.29 Here he might well have been expected to advocate a prominent role for the study of ancient philosophy. After all, he had a deep interest in the subject, and would later publish papers on Plato and the Sophists.30 Yet the reform that the Board, of which he was a member, introduced in 1867 eliminated a paper on the history of philosophy, and 22 See Clark (1858), a radical advance on Clark (1855), a rather com placent essay frequently criticised in Sidgwick (1867b). 23 The two men had travelled together in the Peloponnese around 1857; see Clark (1855) viii. For Sidgwick on ‘pr° jects of reform ’ that occurred ‘partly in consequence’ of T hom pson’s appointm ent see Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 145. 24 Sidgwick (1866) 2-4. 25 Vansittart (1866) 2 and 6; he was supported by W.C. Green (1832-1914), who described ancient philosophy as ‘a vinegar which will not mix with our classical oil, refreshing though it may be if blended with the more kindred Moral Sciences’ (Green (1866) 6). E.W. Bowling (1837-1907), Cambridge University Gazette, 18 Novem ber 1868, 30, held a sim ilar view. 26 Sidgwick (1866) 7. J.R. Seeley (1834-95) also supported this position, but E.M. Cope surprisingly had reservations about making ancient philosophy a subject required of all candidates for the Classical Tripos; see Cope (1866). Perhaps as a m em ber of the Board of Moral Sciences Studies he, like Mozley (cf. n. 50), and Sidgwick at other times, felt that the subject was too difficult for the average student. 27 Between May 1868, when a first proposal was defeated in the Senate, and April 1869, when a second was approved, the proposal for papers on philosophy was amended to exclude ‘general questions on the History of Greek and Latin Philosophy and Literature’ in favour of two papers with passages from specified ‘Greek and Latin philosophers and rhetoricians’ and questions on their subject-matter. It was thus essentially a more advanced version of the translation papers traditional in the Tripos; see nn. 15 and 48. 28 This requirem ent of universality, which lasted until 1882, was presum ably designed to be a hom e-grown parallel to Literae humaniores. 29 As the authors say at Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 155. See also ibid. 153 for Sidgw ick’s letter of 7 Novem ber 1866 reporting that he is on two sub-com m ittees o f the Board of Moral Sciences, ‘and I want as m uch influence as I can have in order to carry through my ideas on the subject, which are rather strong’. 30 See Sidgwick (1869), (1872-3) and (1873). Sidgw ick’s m ajor contribution to Greek philosophy is the paper on the Sophists.

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confined Greek philosophical texts to the area of moral and political philosophy.31 Since this general reform was primarily concerned with transferring history and jurisprudence to a new tripos, the status of ancient philosophy was a relatively minor issue.32 Nonetheless we might have expected evidence of Sidgwick advocating a more extensive study of ancient philosophy in the Moral Sciences Tripos than in the Classical Tripos. One reason for his not doing so can perhaps be reconstructed from his views on three related subjects: classical education, the nature of philosophy, and the study of its history, particularly in antiquity. In late 1867 he had published an essay T he theory of classical education’ in Essays on a liberal education, a controversial collection edited by the radical cleric and educationalist Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903). Sidgwick’s own views were not original, although they seemed shocking because of his status as a Cambridge don.33 Like many contemporaries he attacked composition (particularly verse composition), and advocated a pre-university curriculum in which the study of the classical languages would be reduced in favour of instruction in English, French, and the natural sciences.34 He was also conventional in his use of the language of mental faculties to argue for a better development of imaginative and associative powers than could be furnished by the memorising and imitation involved in translation from, and composition in, the ancient languages.35 Such an adaptation of associationist psychology was the standard way of conceptualising and criticising educational procedures, particularly those of classical education, and of advocating their reform.36

31 Specifically, the B oard’s report of 12 M arch 1867, confirm ed by a grace of the Senate on 28 March, stated that T h e History of Philosophy will, it is conceived, be most conveniently included in the other departm ents of the exam ination’, i.e. logic, mental philosophy, and moral and political philosophy. In a letter o f m id-D ecem ber 1866, three months before this reform was presented and passed, Sidgwick had written: T h e Board o f M oral Science ... has undertaken an entire rem odelling of the list [of books recom m ended to students], which was too large before and not well put together. A good share in this im portant and difficult task devolves upon me . . . ’ (my italics) (Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 159). Ancient philosophical texts were undoubtedly the recipient of his attentions. 32 See W instanley (1947) 185-90. 33 See the review at The Tim es, 6 February 1868, 4 for this reaction; for other reviews see Anon. (1868) and Conington (1868). M cPherson (1959) 85-103 offers only a paraphrase. This essay has a far more aggressive tone than the flysheet (Sidgwick (1866)), partly explained by T h e theory’ applying mainly to pre-university education, although it had im plications for procedures at the University. G rote’s more polished essay is confined to higher education, and generally superior to Sidgw ick’s; it does not, however, discuss ancient philosophy in the curriculum. 34 Lowe represents a classic, and extreme, statement of this position from outside the academy. But a great textual critic, Charles Badham (1813-84) (on whom see Naiditch (1991) 127 n. 13; Collard (1993) 340-1; and Turney et al. (1991) 144—6 and 189-91), was proud of having introduced the study of French into his school at Birmingham in the early 1860s; see Badham (1864) 16-17. At Cambridge Sidgwick’s friend, and colleague on the Moral Sciences Board and in the ‘Grote Club’ (cf. n. 7), John Rickards Mozley (1840-1931), even wanted modem languages included in the Classical Tripos; see Mozley (1866) and (1871). 35 See Sidgwick (1867b), especially 304-13. This language is so pervasive that it seems pointless to offer parallels. Cope (1851) is representative in the following deprecation of verse composition: ‘... we may purchase the cultivation of one habit or faculty of the mind, and that o f inferior im portance, at too dear a cost if we sacrifice to it the developm ent of the logical, reflective, analytical, and acquisitive [sic] faculties, which classical studies properly directed may be made to prom ote.’ 36 See Rothblatt (1976) 126-33 for some general discussion of this topic.

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But where Sidgwick spoke in his own voice, as a philosopher concerned about higher education, he stated baldly that the claim of Latin and Greek literature ‘to give the best teaching in mental, ethical and political philosophy, the last relic of their old prestige, is rapidly passing away’.37 As he argued: ... if there be any who believe that the summit of a liberal education, the crown of the highest culture, is Philosophy - meaning by Philosophy the sustained effort, if it be no more than an effort, to frame a complete and reasoned synthesis of the facts of the universe38 - on them it may be especially urged how poorly equipped a man comes to such a study, however competent he may be to interpret the thoughts of ancient thinkers, if he has not qualified himself to examine, compre­ hensively and closely, the wonderful scale of methods by which the human mind has achieved its various degrees of conquest over the world of sense.39 So here is ancient philosophy sidelined in favour of the study of natural science as the principal route to philosophy, where philosophy is the systematisation of contemporary knowledge. And he had not finished: We are told that Plato wrote over his door ‘Let no one who is without geometry enter here.’ In all seriousness we may ask the thoughtful men, who believe that Philosophy can still be best learnt by the study of the Greek masters, to consider what the inscription over the door should be in the nineteenth century of the Christian era.40 In another forceful curricular essay, ‘Liberal education’ (from early 1867),41 Sidgwick focused exclusively on university education, and asked with reference to Oxford ‘Greats’: ‘Assuming that classics maintains its place as the literary element in our general education, ought philosophy to be studied, to the extent that it is at Oxford, through the medium of Plato and Aristotle?’42 He thought that ancient philosophy might 37 Sidgwick (1867b) 288. Cf. Mozley (1863) 47; this essay deals, at 40-50, with a number of the same issues involving the study of ancient philosophy that concerned Sidgwick, and may well have influenced him. 38 As Schneewind (1977) 52 notes, this is Sidgw ick’s first definition of philosophy, which he later elaborated in various places: see Sidgwick (1886b) 203, and Sidgwick (1902) 13, 17, and 105. In discussing the problem of the criteria of truth (see n. 59), he em ployed a more capacious definition of philosophy as the systematisation of ordinary beliefs or common sense; see Sidgwick (1869) 582, and the early fragm ent (cf. n. 59) at Sidgwick (1905) 467. 39 Sidgwick (1867b) 316-17. 40 Sidgwick (1867b) 317. 41 Sidgwick (1867a), written probably in late 1866 or early 1867, partly to consider the place of ancient philosophy in the Cambridge curriculum. That is, having supported the introduction of papers on the subject into the Classical Tripos in his flysheet of October 1866, Sidgwick now, I suspect wanted to consider the best way to handle it within Moral Sciences, where a reform, in which he played a major role (Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 159) was in fact introduced in M arch 1867, a month before the publication of ‘Liberal education’ (ibid. 160). 42 Sidgwick (1867a) 472.

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have a place in the category of ‘the history of ethical opinion’. For while he feared that such study might degenerate into an exercise in memorising, and ‘the repetition of halfunderstood phrases’, he admitted that since ‘the principles of ethics lie still involved in doubt and conflict’ a student is best confronted with problems from a ‘more remote’ period.43 This attitude was embodied in the reform of the Moral Sciences Tripos in 1867, where Greek philosophical texts were allowed to preserve a ‘relic of their old prestige’ in the category of moral and political philosophy, but were excluded from the papers on mental philosophy (psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics) and logic.44 At Oxford, as Mark Pattison (1813-84) explained in 1876, things were ordered differently: ‘For such philosophical teaching as exists among us we must look to the “school” of classics, or “Litterae [sic] humaniores”. We have in Oxford,’ he says, with reference to Cambridge, ‘no “moral science [sic] tripos”. Philosophy has no substantive existence of its own.’45 Pattison then described a philosophical curriculum in which ancient philosophy was studied in all areas, and not marginalised within moral and political philosophy as at Cambridge.46 The contrast would endure for the next century: Cambridge philosophy was a specialisation, Oxford philosophy a part of general education, with ancient philosophy allowed to span classics and philosophy, and occupy the attention of students of ‘general philosophy and the history of modem philosophy.’47 At Cambridge a further divide had been created in the study of ancient philosophy. By the early 1870s students taking the Classical Tripos were answering brief focused questions on set texts (also mainly on moral and political philosophy); the subject, as Richard Jebb had proposed, had entered that Tripos ‘less as Philosophy than as Literature.’48 Meanwhile, students in the Moral Sciences Tripos were invited to write essays on ancient philosophy in the context of general papers on moral and political philosophy.49

43 Sidgwick (1867a) 472-3. 44 See Sidgwick (1876) 246 for his account of this curriculum in 1876. The six works recom m ended under the subheading T h e history of ethical and political opinions’ were Plato’s Protagoras, Gorgias, P hilebus, and R epublic; A ristotle’s Nicom achean ethics; and C icero’s De finibus. 45 Pattison (1876) 90. 46 In 1863 Mozley (M ozley (1863) 49) glorified Oxford as dem anding ‘a deep and real acquaintance with ancient philosophy’. Pattison, who was in a better position to judge, had reservations about the extent to which m emory was ‘the only faculty called into play’ in the study of philosophy in Literae hum aniores; see Pattison (1876) 93. 47 Cf. Broad (1957) 14; M ure (1937) supplements and continues Pattison’s account to the 1930s. 48 Jebb (1867) 3. This does not mean that easier works were always included. W alter Leaf (1852-1927) had to handle the Philebus in 1874; see Leaf (1932) 102-4. But it does m ean that questions were of a rather factual and doxographical nature, too brief and num erous to allow students to reconstruct arguments, let alone develop counter-argum ents, as W hewell (see n. 20) might have wished. This was undoubtedly the result o f philosophy being required of all candidates for the Classical Tripos (cf. n. 28). On the situation after 1882 see n. 65. 49 A good exam ple is qu. 10 from the moral philosophy paper o f W ednesday 27 N ovem ber 1872: ‘It has been said that there is no regular progress in morals. Test this assertion by com paring carefully the list of special virtues recognised by (1) Aristotle, (2) Cicero, (3) m odern England’. Examples are taken from the standard series Cambridge University Examination Papers.

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This result accorded not only with Sidgwick’s reservations about the significance of ancient philosophy for the study of philosophy, but also with his procedures in teaching philosophy. In 1866, whilst preparing lectures on Cicero’s Definibus, he had written that he hated ‘the history of philosophy even more than any other history; it is so hard to know what any particular man thought, and so worthless when you do know it.’50 It is scarcely surprising therefore to find a student of his from the late 1860s recalling that Sidgwick ‘did not unduly force upon us the historic method of studying philosophy’, and ‘never drove us into these arid regions of speculation where, to the modem mind, the arguments seen without cogency and the conclusions without interest.’51 Now, ‘the modern mind’ addressed by this method had been a concern of Sidgwick’s in ‘The theory of classical education’, where he noted that with reference to literature generally: ... the branch of this study which seems to have the greatest utility, if the space we can allot to it is limited, is surely that which explains to us (as far as is possible) the intellectual life of our own age; which teaches us the antecedents of the ideas and feelings among which, and in which, we shall live and move. Such a course, at this moment of history, would naturally contain a much lather modern than ancient element.52 This larger need to understand the contemporary world was clearly one that Sidgwick satisfied philosophically in a Moral Sciences Tripos freed from any extensive historical studies.53 It helps explain why he was content to leave the study of ancient philosophy to the Classical Tripos, after he had found it unsuitable for an undergraduate curriculum in philosophy.54 In his own work Sidgwick of course made constructive use of the 50 Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 140. Mozley (1863) 4 0 -2 also em phasised the im penetrability of ancient thought, particularly with reference to Plato: ‘no one but an original thinker can understand Plato at the present day, because all others are bound in by the language of modern thought’ (ibid. 42). 51 Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 310, quoting a m em oir by Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), who was placed in the second class of the M oral Sciences Tripos in 1869. 52 Sidgwick (1867b) 287. This position is a corollary of his rejection (ibid. 293-4) of the view that classical literature offers a ‘perfection of form ’, something that shocked the reviewer in The Times (see n. 33). M ore generally, the em phasis on contem porary literature was probably an intentional criticism of W hew ell’s view that classical literature, with mathem atics, constituted a body of ‘perm anent studies’ that were ‘indestructible intellectual possessions of our race’; see W hewell (1850) 96-8. 53 He satisfied it also by his interest in contem porary poetry, which he shared with M ozley. His essay on Clough even includes (at Sidgwick (1904) 60, noted by Schneewind (1977) 49) a depiction of the contem porary sceptical m ood, something that he was in effect trying to counter by form ulating a satis­ factory criterion o f truth (see n. 59 below). W ithin the M oral Sciences Tripos, he was later able to satisfy it by his contributions to political economy. 54 In the debate over the reform of the Classical Tripos at the end of the century Sidgwick argued with Henry Jackson about the study of ancient philosophy in Pt. II. Here he remarked: ‘I have serious doubts as to the educational value, for most men, of a second-hand study of dead philosophies imperfectly understood.’ See Sidgwick (1898) and Jackson (1898). An earlier flysheet of 3 Novem ber 1898, m entioned in Sidgwick (1898) and containing similar views, has not been located.

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history of philosophy, ancient as well as modern.55 He also held general views about the nature and historical evolution of Greek ethical thought,56 and formulated a sound conception of the procedures to be followed in dealing with the history of philosophy.57 But none of this either significantly influenced him in the teaching of philosophy, or led him to enhance the study of ancient philosophy in the Cambridge Moral Sciences Tripos. In general, he placed limited value on historical studies in philosophy in the context of an undergraduate curriculum.58 In later years his opposition to what he called ‘historical method’ in philosophy only grew. In 1886 he would state bluntly that a study of the development of human opinion in any department may give us valuable confirmation for conclusions otherwise arrived at as to the right procedure for attaining truth59 in that department; but I do not see how such conclusions are to be established in the first instance by a purely historical method.60 55 See especially the autobiographical fragm ent attached to the sixth edition of The methods o f ethics, where he acknowledges the influence of Nicomachean ethics II—IV on The methods Bk. Ill; see Sidgwick (1874) xxi-ii. Surveys, such as Broad (1938-9), have virtually nothing to say about his contributions to the history of philosophy. 56 See Sidgwick (1905) 371 and (1879) 583 on, respectively, the developm ents between the Sophists and Plato, and the relation between Hellenistic ethics and Socrates. See W hite (1992) on his general view of Greek ethics, and Irwin (1992) on his views on Aristotelian ethics. 57 The evidence is from the introduction to The methods o f ethics (Sidgwick (1874) 12). Here he notes that he is not going to present ‘a natural or critical history of [ethical] system s’, but defines what he is eschewing with some precision. He will not ‘(a) study [ethical systems] historically, tracing the changes in thought through the centuries, or (b) com pare and classify them according to relations of resemblance, or (c) criticise their internal coherence’. These com plem entary procedures underlie Sidgw ick’s Outlines o f the history’ o f ethics, and examples can be found in many places in his writings; for (c), for example, see Sidgwick (1874) 125 and 376-8 on the fundamental notions in Stoic and Epicurean ethics. 58 Cf. n. 54; this was still his attitude in Sidgwick (1898). 59 By the ‘right procedure’ here he meant what he called the criterion of truth, an issue that he identified as central in philosophy in the early years of his career. See ‘Verification of beliefs’ (= Sidgwick (1871)), on which see Schneewind (1977) 56-8 in the context of an analysis at 52-62 of Sidgw ick’s views on knowledge and philosophy). See also Sidgwick (1874) 508-9 where he concludes The methods o f ethics by stating that a ‘general exam ination of the criteria of true and false beliefs’ is needed to address the problem of reconciling the com peting claims of duty and self-interest. (The logic paper of the Moral Sciences Tripos set for Friday 2 December 1870 had the question: ‘W hat is (1) the meaning, (2) the value of a philosophical criterion of Truth. Criticise the principal criteria that have been proposed.’ It may have been set by Sidgwick while he was working on ‘Verification of beliefs’.) Schneewind (1977) 59 also rightly dates the posthumously published fragm ent on different types of criteria at Sidgwick (1905) 461 - 7 to the same period as ‘Verification of beliefs’, although he thinks that it may have been revised. Sidgwick remained interested in the issue of the criterion of truth to the end of his life; cf. Sidgwick (1905) 430-60. But nowhere in his engagem ent with this problem did he draw any parallels with the num erous ancient discussions of the criterion. The evidence could not have been unknown to him. In the paper of W ednesday 28 February 1872 on C icero’s De finibus set in the Classical Tripos there was a question inviting com parison between the Epicurean Canonic and ‘the Stoic tenet of overpowering impression (kcitaleptike phantasia) as a standard of truth’. 60 Sidgwick (1886b) 213; cf. also 219. For his opposition to historical method in the study of political thought see Sidgwick (1891) 7 -1 0 and (1903) 4 -5 , and cf. Collini (1992) 352-3. The only place, as far as I know, where he associates historical m ethod with Hegel is at Sidgwick (1886a) 279-80.

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When applied to philosophy this dogma meant that, whatever his occasional practice, Sidgwick did not think that contemporary philosophical problems could in principle be constructively defined and clarified by the study of historical evidence. It also clearly implied that contemporary philosophy could not be used to enrich such historical studies.61

3. 1870-1900: aftermath62 A few months before Henry Sidgwick’s death Edward Seymer Thompson (1848-1912) corresponded with him about the articles on the Sophists that Sidgwick had written a quarter of a century earlier, and asked whether he had published a paper on the course of Greek moral philosophy between the Sophists and Plato promised at the end of those studies.63 That unpublished, and, it seems, unwritten, paper in some ways symbolises the fact that Sidgwick abandoned the study of ancient philosophy early in his career, and accepted, like his philosophical contemporaries, that its primary status at Cambridge lay within the Classical Tripos.64 Although he did not single-handedly influence the attitudes of his colleagues and students, he had clearly helped make philosophy at Cambridge inhospitable to the study of ancient philosophy. Further reforms in 1882 ensured more specialised study of ancient philosophy within the Classical Tripos,65 where it was pursued by two outstanding future philosophers, G.F. Stout (1860-1944) and G.E. Moore (1873-1958),66 despite there being (since 61 G.E. M oore’s notes from Sidgw ick’s lectures on ethical systems in the autumn of 1894 wickedly summarise Sidgw ick’s attitude to historical studies; Sidgwick reportedly said that he would treat ethical systems ‘with a view to ascertainm aint of truth; and hence must arrange them differently from historians. All systems are wrong but mine, and grouped round m ine’ (Moore (1894) unnum bered 2). 62 This section is a mere sketch of a period that needs more investigation to test the sweeping judgem ents often made about it (see n. 71). 63 TCC Add. ms. c/95 (151), letter of 20 M arch 1900. For Sidgw ick’s promise see Sidgwick (1905) 371. 64 His later publications of 1892 and 1894 on Greek history and political thought (see Sidgwick (1892), (1894a-c)) were undertaken in connection with his work on political science. Cf. Sidgwick (1892) with (1891) 6 03-9 and (1903) 107-11; and Sidgwick ( 1894b) and (1894c) with his (1903) 83-5. 65 That is, philosophy becam e a special subject in the optional Pt. II of this Tripos, undoubtedly an important factor in the professionalisation of the study of ancient philosophy at Cambridge that W hewell had advocated decades earlier (see n. 20). It was the context in which Henry Jackson, Richard Archer-Hind (1849-1910; see Naiditch (1988) 172), Robert Drew Hicks (1850-1929; see Naiditch (1988) 215), E.S. Thompson, and later James Adam (1860-1907), A.C. Pearson (1861-1935), R.G. Bury (1869-1951), R.K. Gaye (1877-1909) and F.M. C om ford (1874-1943), developed their scholarship. 66 Stout was in its first class in 1886, Moore in its second in 1896. Broad (1957) 16 refers to both, along with Sidgwick, as exam ples of ‘em inent Cambridge philosophers’ who ‘distinguished them selves in classical studies before taking philosophy’, although M oore won no distinction in ancient philosophy, and the informally trained Sidgwick (cf. n. 7) did not ‘take’ philosophy at all. Broad also refers, without offering examples, to classicists who took an interest in the work of philosophers. R.D. Hicks and E.S. Thompson actually took the Moral Sciences as well as the Classical Tripos in the early 1870s, but this practice does not seem to have been widely followed. Indeed, from the inter-war years there is some anecdotal evidence that classicists were among those who failed to stay the course of B road’s intro­ ductory lectures on philosophy; see Britton (1978) 297.

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1883) a paper on the subject in the Moral Sciences Tripos.67 In the Classical Tripos Henry Jackson (1839-1921), ‘essentially a scholar as the Cambridge tradition reckoned scholarship’,68 was for forty years the dominant figure in ancient philosophy. He combined philological rigour with a wide range of interests in classical studies,69 a combination that did not equip him to cross the disciplinary divide between philosophy and classics70 any more than it reportedly did his major successors at Cambridge in the half century after his death.71 By the 1950s when C.D. Broad noted the ‘watertight compartments’ of ancient philosophy and general philosophy at Cambridge, the origins of this situation were too remote to be identified. If the thesis of this chapter is correct, these can be firmly located in the thoughts and actions of Henry Sidgwick in the late 1860s.72

67 The notice for its first year (1885), attached to the M inutes of the Moral Sciences Board (UA Min. V. 10), notes that that year’s special subject ( T h e philosophy of Plato, with special reference to his physical and m etaphysical doctrines’) will not include passages for translation ‘but a knowledge of the Greek technical terms will be required’. The reading list consists of three general histories. 68 Pearson (1922) 7. 69 The idealism present in his, and A rcher-H ind’s, interpretation of the later Plato (see Turner (1981) 381; Guthrie (1978) 260) is form ulated without any direct reference to contem porary philosophy. 70 On Jackson’s teaching m ethods, and his involvem ent in the Classical Tripos, see Parry (1926) 38-41, Leaf (1932) 102-4 (with reference to the early 1870s) and Com ford (1931) 5 -7 (= 367-9). For further biographical inform ation see Naiditch (1988) 165-6; add M oore (1942) 19-20 on Jackson’s philo­ sophical limitations, and Leslie (1926) 207 for a cruel pillorying of his elem entary lectures in the early 1900s in a roman a clef. 71 See Johnson (1994) 5 (quoting G.E.R. Lloyd on F.M. Cornford); Irwin (1995) ix (on Cornford and W.K.C. Guthrie); Lloyd (1982) 571 (on Guthrie and the larger issue). 72 I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following: A. Sproston and E. Leedham -Green at, respectively, Trinity College (W ren Library) and the University Library; P. Jones (K ing’s College), and C.A. Stray for supplying research materials; Stray and P.G. Naiditch for com m enting on an earlier draft; my own university for a research grant.

Ill

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CAMBRIDGE GREEK PLAY: 1882-1912

Pat Easterling The Greek Play has been a Cambridge institution since 1882; its history is well documented, but not much of the relevant material is easily available in published form. So it makes sense to begin with a note on the archive and other sources, before attempting an outline sketch of the period between 1882 and 1912 (the date of the last production before the First World War). This is the earliest of the three1 phases into which the story so far seems to fall. The main collection of material is the records of the Greek Play Committee, which are housed in the University Library under the care of John Hall, the Committee’s Hon. Librarian.2 These include minutes and correspondence, programmes, photographs, posters, reviews and related magazine articles, and for several recent productions tape recordings; the Library also holds copies of all the published works associated with the Greek Play: acting editions with text and facing translation (discontinued after 1965), musical scores and books of etchings relating to some of the earliest productions. There are plenty of incidental references to the plays and the people involved in them in letters, memoirs and accounts of late-Victorian and Edwardian Cambridge;3 there is also an oral tradition, captured by Patrick Wilkinson in his brief history of the Greek Play in the centenary programme (1983).4

1 The other two are 1921-1947 and 1950 (the first production in which wom en took part on a par with men) to the present. Or one might put the second division after Oedipus Coloneus in 1950, the last of J.T. Sheppard’s productions. For a com plete list of productions see Appendix. 2 Enquiries about the archive should be addressed to Dr John Hall at the University Library; items from the archive may be consulted in the L ibrary’s M anuscripts Room. 3 The m ost systematic account up to 1909 is Edwards (1909) 541-51. See also Pryor and Speed (1888); Parry (1973). In Trinity College Library there is material relevant to Oedipus Tyrannus (1887) in the H. Babington Smith papers (HBS 3) and to Wasps (1909) in Robertson F I. 4 Cambridge Greek Play Com m ittee (1983). This publication also includes an account of the music for Greek plays by Philip Radcliffe and a brief section by me entitled ‘Academic aspirations’; cf. Easterling (1984), 89-94. Copies of these publications are kept in the archive.

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The context: (i) a Cambridge institution The Greek Play needs to be set in the context of other developments in Cambridge in the 1870s and ’80s. The emergence of something approaching a modern university can be traced to such momentous events as the abolition of religious tests for would-be graduates of the University, the piecemeal introduction during the seventies of changes in college statutes by which fellows were allowed to marry, the admission of women students (the foundations that later became Girton and Newnham Colleges started life in 18695 and 1871 respectively), and the development of the supervision system under the influence of Henry Jackson at Trinity.6 The study of classics, too, was changing, and moves were being made in exciting directions. This is clear from the division of the Tripos into two parts in 1879 (first examined in 1882), with a specialised Part II designed for the scholarly few who would want to take options in ancient history, philosophy, archaeology and language (i.e. philology, not linguistic exercises of the kind that dominated Part I and all the prize examinations).7 Of these options the one that most strikingly reflected recent developments was classical archaeology, first brought to Cambridge as an academic subject by Sidney Colvin, who was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum from 1876 to 1883 and as Slade Professor of Fine Art illustrated his lectures by showing casts of ancient sculpture; in 1878 he gave a course on the new excavations at Olympia. By 1884 there was a new museum of plaster casts, the ‘Museum of Classical and General Archaeology’ in Little St Mary’s Lane.8 It is not accidental that the Greek Play was launched in the early eighties in this relatively favourable academic climate, and at a time when undergraduate ‘theatricals’ had already begun to establish themselves: the Amateur Dramatic Club had been in existence since 1855, and the Footlights Club was founded in 1883. From the start there was a Committee, whose composition is known for each production: it is interesting that all through the earliest period some of its members were undergraduates and BAs, and from one production to the next there was a fair degree of continuity as junior performers one year took on more responsibility next time round. Some of them became established Cambridge figures and served on the Committee for many years: M.R. James, for example, who like a couple of other Greek Play enthusiasts ended up as Provost of King’s,9 first appears as Peithetairos in the Birds of 1883; in 1885 he was on the Committee as a BA and took a walk-on part as one of the dicasts in Eumenides. Performances were put on by permission of the Vice-Chancellor; and the actors, though not all the musicians, were drawn from among the undergraduates and BAs. Women did not take part until after they became members of the University in 1948, although an exception was made in 1885, when Janet Case of Girton College took the part of 5 6 7 8 9

At Hitchin; from 1873 in Cambridge. For the background see Brooke (1993); Johnson (1994); Leedham -Green (1996). An option in ‘Literature and C riticism ’ was introduced in 1895. See Stray (1997a). See Beard (1993); Connor (1989), esp. 217. Walter Dumford and J.T. Sheppard. James became Provost in 1905, Dumford in 1918 and Sheppard in 1933.

THE CAM BRIDG E GREEK PLAY

Figure 3. Janet Case as Athena in the E um enides, 1885. Figures 3 -1 2 are reproduced by perm ission of the Cam bridge G reek Play Com m ittee.

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Athena in Eumenides (fig 3),10and for plays which included children’s parts schoolgirls might be recruited, as for Antigone and Ismene in OT in 1887.

The context: (ii) Greek plays outside Cambridge The Greek Play was a great innovation for Cambridge, at a period when innovations had a good chance of arousing interest, but it was also a response to the times. Greek plays were in the air, and the most significant event for the Cambridge experiment was the production in 1880 of Agamemnon in Greek at Oxford, in the hall of Balliol College, by Frank Benson, which also played at Eton, Harrow and Winchester and for a few nights in London.11This was followed by the Harvard Oedipus Tyrannus in 1881 (a great success with large audiences in Cambridge Massachusetts, but a relative flop when it was revived in New York in 1882).12 In the same year as Cambridge staged Ajax, there was a performance of Alcestis at Bradfield College: the headmaster, Herbert Gray, had invited Benson and his collaborator W.L. Courtney, an Oxford philosopher, to put on the play and (with himself as Admetus) take part; this inaugurated a tradition that still continues.13 At Oxford in 1887 there was an OUDS production of Alcestis in English with Jane Harrison in the cast. It would be wrong to suggest that this new fashion came out of nowhere: there had been an admired German-inspired production of Antigone in London with Mendelssohn’s music in 1845; more recently, Greek plays in English translation had been put on in Scotland, thanks to the enterprise of H.C. Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering at Edinburgh, an enthusiast who ran a private theatre. But what was happening now had more chance, for a number of reasons, of making a lasting impression. The Greek Play had the benefit of what amounted to institutional backing, perceived relevance to the most progessive trends in the study of the ancient world, and the aesthetic attraction of classical drapery and tableaux at a time when Hellenism in art, as represented by Leighton, Alma Tadema and Poynter, had powerful imaginative appeal.14 10 Janet Case (fig. 3) had taken the lead in an all-female Electra privately perform ed at Girton in 1883. She later taught Greek to Virginia W oolf and the painter Henry Holiday among others. See The Times obituary, 22 July 1937 (by Virginia W oolf): T h ere must still be some Cambridge men who rem em ber her, a noble Athena, breaking down the tradition [only three years old at the time!l that only men acted in the Greek play ... She was no dilettante; she could edit a Greek play and win praise from the great Verrall himself. But if the pupil were destined to remain an am ateur Janet Case accepted the fact without concealing the drawbacks and made the best of it. The gram m ar was shut and the play opened. Somehow the m asterpieces o f Greek dram a were stormed, without gram m ar, without accents, but somehow, under her compulsion, so sane and yet so stimulating, out they shone, if inaccessible still supremely desirable.’ 11 See Campbell (1891) 317-22; M acintosh (1997) 290-1. 12 See Jebb (1883) xlviii-ix and Appendix 201-6; Hartigan (1995) 7-13. 13 Dr V alpy’s productions of plays in Greek at Reading School were an earlier tradition still (1806-27). See Hall (1997). 14 See Jenkyns (1989). The staging of George W arr’s The Tale o f Troy (scenes and tableaux from Homer) in London in 1883 as a fund-raiser for w om en’s classes at King’s College London belongs to the same context; cf. M acintosh (1997) 292-4. See Raverat (1952) 23-4 for her m other's account of one of the perform ances (n. 30 below). For the larger context see now Marshall (1998). esp. ch. 4.

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The first Cambridge Greek Play The moving spirits behind Ajax in 1882 were two interesting men who were both in a sense outsiders, but both had many links with the traditional classical establishment and succeeded in recruiting an influential group of dons for the first Committee. The elder of the two was John Willis Clark (1833-1910), socially an insider if ever there was one: his father had been Professor of Anatomy, and his uncle, Robert Willis, was Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, a polymath whose great work on the buildings of Cambridge Willis Clark revised, completed and eventually published (1886). He had taken the Classical Tripos and held a Prize Fellowship at Trinity, but his interests were in natural sciences and archaeology; in 1866 he had been appointed superintendent of the Museum of Zoology and continued in this post until he became University Registrary in 1891. He had a passionate interest in the theatre and had been associated with the ADC from its early days; this must have given him the right kind of practical experience for the new venture, and his main role was always more like what we should now call producer rather than director, though he seems to have trained actors as well as arranging for the making of sets and costumes and managing a great deal of the business of each producton. The records of Birds in 1883 show how his various interests were combined: it was on his initiative that samples of birds’ skins from stuffed specimens in his museum were sent to the costumiers (fig. 4).15 Willis Clark’s younger colleague (called ‘secretary’ for this production, ‘stage manager’ for Birds in 1883 and ‘trainer of the actors’ for Ion in 1890) was Charles Waldstein, a more exotic figure in the Cambridge of the time, a New Yorker of German Jewish origin who had studied at Columbia and Heidelberg and worked on classical archaeology at Leipzig and Munich. (He must have been one of the first members of staff in Cambridge to hold a Ph.D., proudly noted in the list of members of the Committee in the acting edition. Cambridge did not get around to awarding Ph.D.s of its own till the 1920s.) At the time when he and Willis Clark decided to put on a Greek play he had only just arrived in Cambridge; he was Lecturer, then Reader, in Classical Archaeology and from 1883 to 1889 Director of the Fitzwilliam; next he spent some years excavating in Greece, and when he came back he became a Fellow of King’s. He was twice Slade Professor of Fine Art, and he wrote books on international relations as well as ancient and modern art (Pheidias, Ruskin, the art of the nineteenth century). He was knighted in 1912 and changed his name to Walston in 1918.16 The fact that neither was a classical don in the traditional sense is probably important: both could be identified with new approaches to traditional subjects, and particularly with a strong interest in the artistic remains of past culture. This is a 15 From 1882 to 1900 it was W illis Clark who effectively ran the Greek Play and was its most dom inant shaping influence; by 1903 the responsibility had been handed on to W alter Durnford of K ing’s and H.J. Edwards o f Peterhouse, formerly of Trinity; Edwards had already helped with a couple of productions. 16 Details from W ilkinson (1980) 29 and 170 n. 29. There is a passage in E.F. Benson’s A s We Were ((1930) 139-42) which paints a comic portrait (or caricature?) of W aldstein.

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Figure 4. A scene from the Birds, 1883. An etching by Robert Farren, illustrating vv. 671-2.

persistent thread in surviving reports of the early productions; it seems to have mattered a great deal at the time. They had influential allies from within the establishment: among the classical scholars who served on the first Committee were Benjamin Hall Kennedy (President), Regius Professor of Greek, who contributed an English translation of Birds for the acting edition in 1883, Henry Jackson of Trinity, J.E. Sandys of St John’s, and most significantly R.C. Jebb of Trinity, who provided the text and translation of Ajax for the acting edition. Jebb was Professor of Greek at Glasgow at the time,17 but from the start he was closely associated with the Greek Play, and his edition of Oedipus Tyrannus in 1883 includes a long discussion of the Harvard production, based on a published account which had evidently greatly excited him. The other senior members who belonged to the Committee were Sidney Colvin, presumably through his interest in ancient art, and Charles Villiers Stanford of Trinity, who trained the chorus, though he did not com pose the m usic for this first production. The junior members add up to five: three undergraduates, A.C. Benson of King’s (a chorus member), H.J.C. Cust of Trinity (Teucer) and A.F. Jenkin (Trinity, the son of the pioneering Fleeming Jenkin of Edinburgh) and two BAs, one of them J.K. Stephen (King’s: Ajax; cf.nn. 30 and 31 below). The predominance of King’s and Trinity was to be echoed over a long period of the Greek Play’s history. By 1885 such well known figures as Oscar Browning, Augustus Austen-Leigh (both King’s) and Arthur Verrall (Trinity) had joined the Committee. 17 Jebb succeeded Kennedy as Regius Professor in 1889, and Jackson succeeded him in 1906. On Jebb see Dawe (1990).

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There are some names here and in the lists for 1883 and 1885 that can easily be associated with progressive attitudes to classics: Jackson, for example, who was an innovator as a teacher, A.W. Verrall, who wrote the verse translations for the scores of Birds and OT and was to be very closely involved with some of the later productions (he had begun lecturing in the late seventies; his dramatic delivery excited audiences used to much drier styles)18, and Jebb, who was at work on what must have seemed like unusually modern editions of Greek authors, in which the notes and even the apparatus criticus were in English, and the text was accompanied by a facing translation. His comments on the effects of reviving Greek plays in his edition of Oedipus Tyrannus serve as a pointer to what at best might be hoped for: The recent revivals of Greek plays have had their great reward in proving how powerfully the best Greek Tragedy can appeal to modern audiences. Those who are furthest from being surprised by the result will be among the first to allow that the demonstration was needed. The tendency of modern study had been too much to fix attention on external contrasts between the old Greek theatre and our own. Nor was an adequate corrective of this tendency supplied by the manner in which the plays have usually been studied; a manner more favourable to a minute appreciation of the text than to apprehension of the play as a work of art. The form had been understood better than the spirit. A vague feeling might sometimes be perceived that the effectiveness of the old Greek dramas, as such, had depended essentially on the manners and beliefs of the people for whom they were written, and that a successful Sophocles presupposed a Periclean Athens. Some wonderment appeared to greet the discovery that a masterpiece of Aeschylus, when acted, could move the men and women of to-day. Now that this truth has been so profoundly impressed on the most cultivated audiences which England or America could furnish, - in Germany and France it had been less unfamiliar, - it is not too much to say that a new life has been breathed into the modern study of the Greek drama. [The section ends (p. li) with a brief note on the Cambridge Ajax: ‘to me a new revelation of meaning and power’.19] This idea of ‘breathing new life’ is the clear message that comes through the surviving records of the early productions.20 Putting Greek plays on stage was evidently felt to be an extremely novel and adventurous thing to do, and there is plenty of support for the view, discreetly implied by Jebb, that it was no longer enough to study the texts in 18 On Verrall see Bayfield’s memoir in Bayfield and D uff (1913) ix-cii, incorporating F.M. Cornford’s account o f him as a teacher and lecturer. 19 In a letter to E.B. Cowell (Cambridge University Library Add MS 6377.202) Jebb remarked, ‘The perform ance seemed to me very beautiful and very im pressive. I felt that I had never understood the play before’. Cf. J.T. Sheppard’s remarks on what he had learned from seeing O T perform ed in London and Paris: Sheppard (1920) ix-xiv. 20 Cf. the comment by Bayfield (Bayfield and Duff (1913) xx) on V errall’s ‘strikingly original and brilliant’ edition of M edea (1881): ‘he breathed fresh life into the play’.

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a narrowly technical way, mainly as models for imitation in verse composition or as sources of grammatical peculiarities and (for the more advanced) of textual problems. New approaches which emphasised ‘the human side of Greek studies’ gained impetus from contemporary developments in classical archaeology; it is interesting to see how these attitudes were presented, and what kinds of problems faced the innovators. They were enormously interested in the evidence of ancient architecture, sculpture and vasepaintings, but they clearly thought it was out of the question to use masks or to try to create a modern theatre space that might bear more than a slight relation to the ancient.21 There are some clues to the kinds of compromise they thought appropriate in Waldstein’s preface to Jebb’s acting edition of Ajax: The principle which has been followed in this production of the Ajax of Sophocles has been a strict adherence, within certain limits, to the customs of the ancient Greeks both with regard to real life and to dramatic representation. The limi­ tations referred to are occasioned, in the first place, by the incompleteness of our definite knowledge as to these customs, and, in the second place, by the positive requirement of modern artistic taste. In these cases the general indications contained in ancient authorities have been followed, while the details have been furnished by the suggestions of modern artistic requirements. Thus, for instance, there is but little definite information concerning ancient music, not enough to enable us to reproduce it with exactness. Yet it is known that the choruses contain lyrical interludes more or less carrying out and reflecting the action as it proceeds on the stage proper. The lyrical choruses, acting directly upon the emotions, tend, in a general way, to prepare the audience to receive the more definite impressions conveyed by the words and action of the drama, and in their total effect chorus and action are to force the spectator into sympathy with the characters and their fate. In modern dramatic art this is to a great extent the function of the instrumental music. Incidental music, specially written by Professor Macfarren, has therefore been introduced. Though this music may differ from the music of the ancient Greeks, it no doubt will tend to produce a similar effect upon people whose ear has been trained by a long experience of the most highly developed forms of modern music ... With regard to the stage decoration, scenery (painted by Mr J. O’Connor [an artist friend of Willis Clark’s]) and costumes, an attempt has been made to bring the whole as near as possible to the time of Sophocles. Still, where strict adhesion to archaeological propriety was impossible, care has been taken to follow the best and most appropriate ancient monuments of a later date; so that 21 This was to be done later at Bradfield College: in 1890 an open-air ‘G reek’ theatre was built in a chalk pit. At Cambridge the early productions seem to have used an apron stage to represent the orchestra; see fig. 4. On masks see The Times review of A jax (4 December 1882): ‘No English audience could tolerate masks and high-heeled buskins.’

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the whole might be like the representation of the play, say about the second century B.C. So, for instance, it cannot be destructive of illusion if the thymele, in the centre of the orchestra, though evidently of a later date than the age of Sophocles, is taken from the extant one in the theatre of Dionysos at Athens, the very place in which this play was acted more than two thousand years ago. ... The space to be filled up in our theatre required a pediment; and, for this purpose, a pediment group has been devised, the elements of which are ancient statues. In the centre is the bearded and more dignified Dionysos of the earlier times, on his right and left two Bacchants are reclining on chariots drawn by panthers and led by Erotes. Then follow two reclining Fauns, while the angles are filled with goats rising towards the centre. The attributes held by the figures are those of Dionysiac worship and of the dramatic and musical festivities which formed a part of the same ... ... The armour, properties and dress of the actors, as well as of the sailors in the Chorus, are taken from ancient monuments, chiefly statues and vase-paintings approaching the time of Sophocles and representing scenes from the Homeric poems. What is interesting here is that extremely close attention to archaeological detail is combined with cheerful readiness to mix periods: the antiquarian preoccupations of the first production team certainly did not make them timidly pedantic. The production aroused enough interest for The Times (28 November 1882) to devote an article to it in advance of the first performance. The writer of this piece was respectful, but confident that the most one could hope for was an academic experience: ‘No one, of course, could expect or require that a play of Sophocles should evoke excitement from a modern audience.’ But excitement seems to have been just what was evoked. The surviving photographs (fig. 5 is a specimen) suggest something fairly amateurish and wooden, and some of the reviews had unfavourable things to say about the verse-speaking (‘like clergymen reading lessons’) and the ‘simply atrocious’ pronunciation, but there seems to have been great elation at the idea that a text like Ajax could actually work as theatre. (The comment in Vanity Fair (4 December 1882) that the Chorus ‘waved their arms and sang in unison after the traditional manner’, does not seem to have been intended as a criticism.)22 One of the main themes of the many reviews of this and the other early productions was the ‘vivifying influence’, the ‘contact with actual life’, the ‘vital force and meaning’ of the enacted text. Another feature that captured attention was the aesthetic attraction of ‘classical’ tableaux and drapery. This recalls the account of the Harvard production cited by Jebb, which lavishes attention on the folds and colours of the costumes and the solemn grouping of the stage figures.23 The Times review (4 December) comments on 22 This style evidently persisted, to judge from the detailed notes by H.J. Edwards on choral gestures and movem ent, preserved in the records for Eumenides in 1906. 23 Jebb (1883) 201-6, citing Norman (1882).

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Figure 5. The Chorus of Ajax, 1882.

‘the statuesqueness of Greek tragedy’ and notes that Tecmessa’s costume was loudly applauded when she first appeared on stage. There was a general expectation that the action would be ‘impersonal and ideal’, and the notion of ‘classical restraint’ was so strong that a reviewer could suggest that Ajax contravened it when he laid a hand on Tecmessa’s shoulder (The Portfolio, January 1884). The admired set of Eumenides in 1885 was thought to capture ‘the whole spirit and beauty and calm serenity of Greek art’ (The Illustrated London News), though as Willis Clark later recorded, the design turned out to have been based on a misunderstanding of the layout of the site at Delphi.24

The beginn ing of a tradition The Greek Play, it seems, was fashionable (and fun: ‘all Cambridge raved over it’) and there were special trains from King’s Cross; financially it was successful enough to 24 Cambridge Review , 15 N ovem ber 1900, xvi. There is a detailed and extremely appreciative review of the scenery for Eumenides by G.H. Rendall in the Liverpool University College M agazine for 1886. Here is a sample: T h e severe and stately Doric columns (another tribute to archaeological fidelity), the ritual seats planted against their bases, the central Omphalos, the venerable Caaba-stone of Greek worship, duly decorated with em blem atic stem m ata, and in the background the recesses of the inner sanctuary from which rose the steam of sacrificial or mephitic vapours, all vividly localised the place, and helped the im agination' (p. 5). Rendall, an expert on Eizabethan drama, was Principal of University College Liverpool and Gladstone Professor of Greek: later (1897-1911) Headm aster of Charterhouse.

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make another production the following year seem feasible.25 Birds in 1883 was another runaway success, with music by Hubert Parry making a very strong impact, and an extra performance had to be put on to satisfy the public. A couple of articles registering disapproval from religious quarters give some measure of the popularity of this daring venture (comedy being hardly ‘statuesque’ and ‘restrained’ in the approved manner). The Record of 24 November commented, ‘With much to encourage in the religious state of Cambridge it is saddening to realize the large elements of unbelief and the prevailing worldliness. Our cultivated society is running wild over an approaching reproduction of the Birds of Aristophanes ... ’, and after the event (10 December), ‘This Aristophanic furore is, I venture to think, a mistake to be deplored ... great consumption of time, interest and effort in a place where there is enough dissipation of such things already ...’ But these remarks were running against the tide, and when Birds was revived twenty years later the Times reviewer (18 November 1903) looked back with satisfaction and nostalgia to 1883 and ‘the spectacular beauty of the first production in modern times’. The importance of the music is a significant clue to the attraction of these early Greek Plays. The fact that there were composers available of the talent of Parry, Stanford and Charles Wood, that their scores were published, with English verse translations for singers unfamiliar with Greek, and that the bands were quite sizeable (21 performers for Eumenides in 1885, for example), with local resources augmented from London, makes clear that audiences wanted something ambitious that echoed the taste of the times. Philip Radcliffe’s account of Greek Play music26 identifies Sir George Macfarren’s score for Ajax as ‘very Mendelssohnian ... one could almost have expected Elijah to appear on the stage’, but in Parry’s Birds he finds Brahms and Wagner more influential. He has this to say of Stanford’s music for Eumenides and OT (1887): ‘[Stanford] disapproved of Tristan and Isolde, but was willing to toy with a leitmotif from time to time. The music for Oedipus is the finer of the two; in Eumenides the music for the Furies is bouncing rather than horrific, and that for Athena, though attractive, suggests the graciousness of an Edwardian hostess rather than the dignity of a goddess.’ The music composed by Vaughan Williams for Wasps in 1909 is unique in that its overture has remained popular in the concert repertoire, but it was normal in the early days for lyrics and orchestral suites from the Greek Play to be published as independent compo­ sitions and to have a performance history of their own (Parry’s music for Birds, for example, was performed at the Crystal Palace). Certainly the music took up a good deal of time in the productions themselves: Birds in 1903 ran for three hours,27 and in the Agamemnon of 1900 all 660 lines of lyric were sung. As a reviewer of Wasps in 1909 25 Subscribers had contributed a total of £80 as a guarantee against loss, but the response was evidently better than expected. 26 See n. 4 above. 27 Cf. the account of O T at Harvard (n. 23 above), which ran for three-and-a-half hours, partly, no doubt, because there were many costume-changes.

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commented, ‘A Greek Play is always a musical event of first-rate importance in Cambridge’; the parabasis in this production took twenty minutes to sing.28 Another reason why the early productions proved to be so beguiling was that they could appeal to an élite outside Cambridge as well as within it, and the establishment - social, intellectual, cultural - was either classically trained or at least respectful of classical studies. London society and the society of Cambridge and Oxford were closely interconnected: the accounts of notables who attended (Robert Browning, Alma Tadema, Prince Albert Victor, the Postmaster General .. .),29 the cost of reserved seats (up to 10 shillings), and the attention paid by reviewers make clear that the plays had some cachet as social events.

Figure 6. Menu for dinner at the Cambridge Union Society, 27 November 1909 (Wasps). For this production there were specially printed souvenir menus for dinner at the Union during Greek Play week, with a different set of Greek comic verses for each night.

28 Several reviewers detected the influence of folk tunes, Debussy and Ravel in Vaughan W illiam s’ music (see e.g. the M orning P ost, 27 November). 29 See e.g. the Cambridge Express for 1 D ecember 1883. The Postm aster General was Henry Fawcett, husband of the pioneering Millicent Garrett Fawcett, both of whom had many links with Cambridge.

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A couple of samples may best evoke the atmosphere, one to illustrate the network of social connections, the other the tone of contemporary ‘campus fiction’. H.J. Edwards, who collaborated with Willis Clark and then with Walter Durnford from 1897 to 1909, contributed a history of the Greek Play to the collection of addresses in honour of Clark which was printed in 1909.30 The roll-call of distinguished persons associated with the plays brings out very clearly what a tightly-knit and self-sufficient society it was: Next year, the Birds, another unmistakable success, for which the music of Mr (now Sir) Hubert Parry was in great measure responsible. The part of Peithetairos was given to Mr M.R. James (now Provost of King’s), who bore the burden of the play with admirable ease and skill: and the quaint antics of the Birds themselves never failed to keep the house in merry mood. Mr A.C. Benson31 played the part of the Priest: and both in this play and in the next Mr Stanley M. Leathes (now a Civil Service Commissioner) proved himself a skilful and sympathetic κορυφαῖος. The Eumenides (1885) presented difficulties which taxed the powers of the Committee to the utmost. But, with good actors available - among them Miss J.E. Case, a student of Girton College, who played Athena - and with noble music composed by Mr (now Sir) Charles Villiers Stanford, and rendered by a Chorus who really caught the pity and the terror of it all, the play made a most profound impression [fig. 7]. Not less impressive was the Oedipus Tyrannus, two years later, with Mr J.H.G. Randolph (now Bishop of Guildford) in the title role - a performance that remains indelibly fixed in many a mind Mr C. Platts (already distinguished as the Shade o f Clytaemnestra) as Jocasta, and a strong cast that included those whom we know to-day as the Provost of King’s, the Head Master of Repton (the Rev. L.G.B.J. Ford), and the General Secretary of the Post Office (Sir H. Babington Smith). Sir Charles Stanford’s music added much to the majesty and the pathos of the representation. The Greek Play was topical enough to appear in fiction:32 along with the foundation of the women’s colleges and the early academic successes of some of their students it was used by ‘Alan St Aubyn’ (Frances Marshall) in The Junior Dean (London 1894) as the setting for a chapter in the story of a clever female mathematician from Newnham, in love with an idle undergraduate who fails in Greek.33 The author clearly has minimal 30 See n. 3 above. Gwen R averat’s m other’s account of The Tale o f Troy in London mentions some of the notables in the audience: ‘Gladstone, Sir Isaac Newton [sic], Sir Frederic Leighton and some other great codger sat immediately in front of us’, (Raverat (1952) 24). ‘Sir Isaac N ew ton’ was probably Sir Charles Newton, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. J.K. Stephen, Ajax at Cambridge in 1882, took the part of Hector. 31 Another establishm ent figure: he was a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and ultimately became M aster of M agdalene. See Newsome (1980): pp. 35-6 include notes on B enson’s Etonian friends H.J.C. Cust and J.K. Stephen, who took part with him in Ajax. 32 Another index of topicality is the fact that the Footlights sometimes staged parodies of the Greek Play, as when Ion Revised was put on the week after the production of Ion in 1890. 33 For Greek plays in fiction see also Mitford (1835), cited by Hall (1997) 71 with n. 29.

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Figure 7. Charles Villiers Stanford and the Furies, 1885.

knowledge of Greek tragedy as such and no interest in the earnest aspirations of Waldstein or Jebb; but romantic Hellenism comes into its own in Chapter XXIV: The Newnham girls came in a body, and took up all the best seats in the balcony. There was a thin line of men here and there between the rows of girls, but they only occurred accidentally: the Newnhamites and the Girtonites had seized upon the most favourable position in the house, and maintained it. The undergraduates mustered in great force behind, and enjoyed a distracting view of fair young backs, relieved occasionally by more distracting profiles. There had been great searchings of heart at Newnham for some weeks before the Greek play, and the Cambridge dressmakers had had a bad time of it. With one consent the toilettes had been copied from classic models, and the arrangement of the soft, clinging draperies must have driven the local artistes to the verge of suicide. Everybody in the front was interested in somebody on the stage. There were plenty of people to be interested in. There were men of Trinity, John’s, King’s, Pembroke, and nearly every other college in the ’Varsity. There were citizens and attendants without number in the

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play, beside the Chorus. Everybody that could be got on to the limited stage was lugged in by the heels - at least, he was beautifully dressed, and armed with a crook or some ridiculous weapon, and desired to stand at ease and look pretty. The men performed this part of the programme perfectly. They stood very much at ease, and they looked lovely! And, oh, the way the Greek came out! There never was such a public exhibition of manly limbs as the scanty Greek draperies revealed. Such legs! such arms! such chests! Oh, it was splendid! It brought the tears into the girls’ eyes - at least, into the eyes of girls of the higher culture. The Ideal Man [fig. 8] wore a gracefully-falling garment of some soft white material, and his arms and neck were bare. Perhaps he had been chosen for the beauty of his shapely arms, and his white, full throat, and his pale, close-shaven face. He was the only maiden in the group that could bear the crucial test of white. There was a maiden in pea-green, and another in pink, tall and stately, with black, hairy arms and throat that no amount of powder could make fair.34 In one very important respect the Greek Play looked out to another world beyond the charmed circle. Schoolmasters and their pupils outside the élite of the leading public schools, and teachers and students in the ‘new’ universities, had an interest, too, which is reflected in some of the reviews. Papers that hardly catered for a specially privileged readership (e.g. the Blackburn Weekly Standard in 1903), carried notices, responding no doubt to the fact that self-respecting grammar schools taught Greek and might send parties to see the plays: by 1903 nearly twice as many people were coming as in 1883, and it was the school groups above all that guaranteed long-term viability. The tradition (still maintained) of presenting public lectures in preparation for the production was inaugurated by Jebb and Verrall before Birds in 1903. Verrall put forward a typically speculative and ingenious theory about the exotic religion mentioned in the play, which was eventually published by his daughter in 34 Cf. Hall (1997) 72, quoting M itford’s account of the ‘coarse red paw s’ of the actors perform ing female roles, which had to be whitened with cold cream and chicken-skin gloves. For typical images see figs. 8, 9 and 10. Chris Stray has drawn my attention to a contem porary diary-entry by the Girtonian, Georgina W alrond, which m akes the account in The Junior Dean seem less of a caricature: ‘28 Nov to the ION: I enjoyed it far more than I ever expected. The acting wasnt much, & the play is both dull and improper, still it was a very pretty sight, and the music (by young M r W ood, the Caius organist) is very fine. Mr M arkham as Hermes was a disappointm ent - he looks far handsom er off the stage. Ion him self (M r Powys) was terribly effeminate and pretty, still he sang well, & was beautifully got up. Creusa was clad in an exact imitation of a Greek figure lately dug up, but I didn’t admire the effect. M r Balfour junr looked so nice as a m aiden - in pink. But Mr Buckler as Athena was far the m ost beautiful. The scenery was very pretty, and the grouping first-rate. - W e had capital places, and Teddy and M r Conolly sat just in front, which was nice. I’m afraid we behaved schockingly [a7c], by shaking with laughter in very tragic parts. Some of it was so com ic.’ Georgina W alrond m arried ‘A thena’ in due course and became a distinguished Byzantinist. Permission to quote from her diary is kindly given by her granddaughter, Charlotte Roueche.

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Figure 8. The ‘Ideal M an'? St. J.B. W ynne W illson as the chief attendant in Ion, 1890. In later life he played leading roles in a different sphere: headm aster of Haileybury and of Marlborough, Bishop of Bath and Wells.

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Figure 9. J.F. Crace as Cassandra in Agamemnon, 1900.

43

Figure 10. Rupert Brooke as the Herald in Eumenides, 1906.

1924.35 By 1906 Jebb was dead, but Verrall gave a lecture, as he did in 1909, on that occasion to an audience of nearly a thousand.36 Verrall’s lectures seem to have been more popular than his interpretations of Euripides which influenced the productions of Ion in 1890 and and IT in 1894: if H.J. Edwards’ account is to be trusted, audiences were ‘uninterested, for the most part, in the subtleties of Attic argument and the “higher criticism” of Attic theology’.37 In the very early days it could hardly have been foreseen how quickly the Greek Play would become an institution, with both the strengths and the weaknesses that insti­ tutional status entails. A review of the Eumenides of 1906 begins with this revealing comment: ‘A competent observer once remarked that it is a point of honour among critics to treat pantomimes and Greek plays (both being well-meaning productions) with the utmost indulgence ...’,38 but then the author goes on to give a favourable assessment, full of details that evoke the small world of the élite, not only athletic and social (the hockey players for the Varsity, arriving just in time to take their parts as Propompoi), but also scholarly (referring to Walter Headlam’s discovery that metics 35 In the Cambridge Review for 22 February. It was common for the lectures to be published soon after they were delivered. 36 Bayfield and Duff (1913). 37 Edwards (1909) 544. It is interesting that V errall7s com m entary on Ion had been specially com m issioned by Cambridge University Press to appear in time for the production. 38 St Jam es's Gazette for 3 December.

44

PAT EASTERLING

Figure 11. The Palace of Atreus in Agamemnon, 1900, described by Max Beerbohm as ‘like the Alham bra palace of V arieties’.

in the processions at the Panathenaea wore scarlet cloaks, a practice which might be alluded to at 1.1028 of the play). But although reviewers in general tended to be tolerant and supportive there does seem to have been a growing sense that things needed to change: the Cambridge Review of 8 June 1910 includes a vigorous response by Walter Durnford to critics of Wasps who had asked for greater professionalism in direction. An early harbinger of this kind of criticism had been the review signed ‘MAX’ [Beerbohm] in The Saturday Review for 24 November 1900. ‘I do hope’, it begins, ‘that Cambridge, despite the ignorant or insincere eulogies that have been raining on it from the daily press, feels heartily ashamed of its stupid, tawdry perversion of the “Agamemnon”’. Beerbohm attributed what he saw as the inappropriately ‘cosy, modern cheerfulness’ in sets (fig. 11), costumes and acting (‘a hopeless hash of a Greek tragedy’) to direction by a committee of dons. It may have been easy enough to dismiss

THE CAM BRIDG E GREEK PLAY

45

the Oxonian malice of Beerbohm’s mockery, but a new consciousness does seem to have been developing of what might be made of a Greek play on the modern stage. Between 1903 and 1912 all the productions were revivals of earlier successes, and despite such ambitious creative undertakings as the music for Wasps there may not yet have been much sense of overall ‘interpretation’. The involvement of John Sheppard (fig. 12) in the Oedipus Tyrannus of 1912 was the first sign that a new pattern was emerging.

Figure 12. J.T. Sheppard as Peithetairos in Birds, 1903.

46

PAT EASTERLING

Postscript When the Greek Play came back to life in 1921, it faced a changed world. One of the changes had been the final settling of the Compulsory Greek debate.39 Romantic Hellenism was out of fashion, and although the Classical Tripos still had great cachet the old assumptions of unquestioned superiority were less secure, and some thought Greek was on the way out. Sheppard, as Wilkinson writes, ‘defiantly put on the Oresteian trilogy of Aeschylus, cut by a third but still playing for nearly four hours in nine performances with a huge cast. Significantly, the aim of archaeological correctness in the costumes was now abandoned in favour of effectiveness, with Alec Penrose as the designer. Arnold Bennett wrote of [Sheppard’s] Oresteia in the New Statesman: “He did not produce simply a drama: he produced an artistic ensemble: which is a rarity. The effect was colossal’” .40 Of course Sheppard’s style of production eventually became institutionalised in its turn, but the Greek Play had made a new start. The inter-war period deserves a separate study. With Sheppard now in control, and the centre of gravity switched to King’s, the Greek Play had close links with the theatrical and artistic trends of the times,41 and in 1936 it moved confidently from its traditional venue (the New Theatre) to the Arts Theatre newly founded by John Maynard Keynes. Frogs in that year seems to have been perceived as quite modern and adventurous - certainly the photographs suggest a different atmosphere from that of, say, Wasps in 1909 - but the Greek Play was always liable to suffer as well as to profit from its continuing success as an institution. By the time of Sheppard’s last production in 1950 there was a strong need for a distinctive new style and new sense of identity, but it was some time before experiments began to be made with productions by young theatre professionals. Robert Scott’s Hippolytus in 1968 and Richard Durden’s Birds in 1971 were pointers to the way things would go in the long run. No one now disputes the need for professional direction, and the Greek Play has turned out to be adjustable to a world in which classics no longer has a privileged place in any curriculum. The paradox of the present situation is that the theatre-going and television-watching public is more interested than ever before in performances of Greek plays. Usually these are in English translation, but if English-speaking audiences will go to watch Medea in Japanese and the Oresteia in Russian or Romanian there is a place yet for productions in ancient Greek.42

39 See Raphaely in this volume. 40 L.P. W ilkinson in Cambridge Greek Play Com m ittee (1983). 41 It would be interesting to trace the links between the Greek Play and the Festival Theatre in the period from 1926 to 1933 when Terence Gray directed several productions of Greek plays in translation; another im portant factor must have been the involvem ent of George Rylands, who often assisted Sheppard, in the wider theatrical world. 42 I am grateful for inform ation and help of various kinds to Alison Duke, John Easterling, Edith Hall, John Hall, Ted Kenney, Fiona M acintosh, Harry Porter and Chris Stray.

47

THE CAM BRIDG E GREEK PLAY

APPENDIX Greek Plays at Cambridge D irection

M usic

1882 1883 1885 1887 1890 , 1894

Ajax Birds Eumenides Oedipus Tyrannus Ion Iphigenia in Tauris

J. J. J. J. J. J.

G.A. Macfarren Hubert Parry Charles Villiers Stanford Charles Villiers Stanford Charles Wood Charles Wood

1897 1900 1903 1906 1909 1912 1921 1924 1927 1930 1933

Wasps Agamemnon Birds Eumenides Wasps Oedipus Tyrannus Oresteia Birds Electra (Sophocles) Peace Bacchae Oresteia

J. Willis Clark/H.J. Edwards J. Willis Clark/H.J. Edwards W. Dumford/H.J. Edwards W. Durnford W. Dumford/H.J. Edwards W. Durnford/J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard

Tertius Noble Hubert Parry Hubert Parry Charles Villiers Stanford Ralph Vaughan Williams Charles Villiers Stanford C. Armstrong Gibbs Hubert Parry Dennis Arundell Dennis Arundell Handel arr. Arundell C. Armstrong Gibbs

1936 1939 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992

Erogs Antigone Frogs Oedipus Coloneus Agamemnon Bacchae Antigone Clouds Oedipus Tyrannus Hippolytus Birds Medea Electra (Sophocles) Electra (Euripides) Women ofTrachis Lysistrata Bacchae Hippolytus

J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard J.T. Sheppard George Rylands Alan Ker Alan Ker Dennis Arundell George Rylands/Alan Ker Robert Scott Richard Durden George Rylands George Rylands David Raeburn David Raeburn Costis Livadeas Dictynna Hood Philip Howard

Walter Leigh Patrick Hadley W alter Leigh Robin Orr Patrick Hadley Peter Tranchell Peter Tranchell Philip Radcliffe Philip Radcliffe Joscelyn Godwin Henry Ward Philip Radcliffe Philip Radcliffe John Odom Mervyn Cooke ‘With Modem Greek Music’ Andrew Lovett Andrew Lovett

1995

Birds

Dictynna Hood

Andrew Lovett

1998

Trojan Women

Jane Montgomery

Keith Clouston

Venue St Andrews Hall = Theatre Royal

New Theatre

Arts Theatre

Corn Exchange Arts Theatre

Willis Willis Willis Willis Willis Willis

Clark/Charles Waldstein Clark/Charles Waldstein Clark Clark Clark/Charles Waldstein Clark/S.M. Leathes

Figure 13. Agnata Ramsay triumphs in the Classical Tripos, 1887. A cartoon from P unch, 2 July 1887.

IV

WOMEN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914'

Claire Breay The foundation of Girton College in 1869 and of Newnham College in 1871 introduced women to the Classical Tripos. Some women did well in the examination, a few spec­ tacularly so; most notably Agnata Ramsay who in 1887 achieved the highest First in Part I. But Ramsay’s success was exceptional. On average, women’s results in Part I - then the only compulsory part of the Tripos - were consistently lower than men’s. Women reading classics at Cambridge competed with men on unequal terms because education for middle-class girls was much less developed than that for boys and rarely focused on classics. Girls who did go to school were taught far less Latin than boys and many were taught no Greek at all. The lack of a thorough grounding in Latin and Greek tended to hinder women in Part I, but in the optional Part II - taken by few students, male or female - women were less hampered by their lack of linguistic training and found more scope to excel. The taking of University examinations by women was a controversial issue in the early years of the women’s colleges, as was the question of whether to admit women to degrees. At the same time, classics faced its own controversies, both in Cambridge and nationally, about its content, status and future. The dominant role of classics in the education of English middle- and upper-class men was widely challenged after the mid­ nineteenth century. Opposition ranged from criticism of the content and linguistic bias of classical courses to attacks on the validity of the position of classics at the core of a liberal education. Whilst the theory of a liberal education was widely supported, reformers argued that its benefits could be more profitably derived from scientific subjects and modern languages than from classics. The later nineteenth century saw an expansion in the range o f subjects taught in schools and universities, but despite the

challenges to its status, classics continued to be read by many students at university and retained much of its prestige. The classicists at Girton and Newnham were paradoxical: radical by virtue of their gender alongside a university of men, but conservative in their choice of subject at a 1

I wish to thank Dr M. Beard and Dr G. Sutherland who supervised the dissertation upon which this paper is based.

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CLAIRE BREAY

time when new Triposes were being established. Although most girls received an inadequate grounding in classics at school, the proportion of women chosing to read classics at Cambridge was greater than the proportion of men in the period up to 1914. Moreover, a high proportion of women continued to read classics even though the new Modern Languages and History Triposes became increasingly popular with women.2 This paper will compare the role of classics in the secondary education of girls and boys; it will examine how classical teaching at Girton and Newnham was organised to try to overcome the disadvantages women faced; and finally it will show how the structure and content of the Tripos itself affected women’s achievements.

1. The role of classics in girls' secondary education The later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw many changes in the education of middle-class girls, but there remained considerable discrepancies between the provision for girls and boys. In the 1860s and 1870s, many girls were taught at home by governesses or in small private schools. The type of teaching given by governesses was haphazard and those who taught Latin and Greek were unusual. Elizabeth Welsh, educated at home and at private schools ‘used to say she owed much of the teaching in Latin and Greek which enabled her to take the Classical Tripos in 1875, to the old clergyman whose church her family attended’.3 Changing attitudes to the education of girls and the foundation of new schools in the later nineteenth century meant that fewer girls were taught solely at home. Many girls, though, were still taught at home before their few years of secondary education began, whereas middle-class boys often had an integrated preparatory education.4 Small, private, day and boarding schools dominated educational provision for girls until a new wave of schools began to be founded in the 1870s: even at the end of the nineteenth century, about seventy percent of middle-class girls were being taught in such schools.5 Few of these schools had more than fifty pupils; most had under thirty, many less than ten.6 The Schools’ Inquiry Commission of 1864-7 condemned the inadequacy of girls’ education. It reported, ‘want of thoroughness and foundation; want of system; slovenliness and showy superficiality; inattention to rudiments; undue time given to accomplishments ... want of organisation’.7 The new schools, founded in the later nineteenth century, sought to reform the nature of secondary education for girls. These schools, which were much larger than traditional private schools, helped to change attitudes to the education of girls by concentrating on a broad range of academic subjects rather than feminine accomplishments.8 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Howarth and Curthoys (1987) 8-9. Obituary in the Girton Review n.s. 61 (Lent 1921) 4. Dyhouse (1981) 41-2. Dyhouse (1981) 50. Dyhouse (1981) 46. Schools Inquiry Commission, Report o f Commissioners (1868) 548-9, quoted in Kamm (1971) 30-1. Howarth (1985) 65.

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The new schools fell mainly into two categories. High Schools for Girls - large, public day schools - were most numerous and followed the model of the North London Collegiate School, founded in 1850.9 The other group consisted of large and expensive public boarding schools for girls, which based their curriculum and organisation on boys’ public schools.10 The divisions between the groups were far from precise since many day schools had boarding houses and most boarding schools took some day pupils. Whilst boarding schools tended to have longer hours, many day schools - which taught lessons only in the morning - also had optional afternoon sessions of one or two hours for special subjects or preparation.11 More fundamental, though, was the widespread commitment, across the different types of school, to a broad academic curriculum. After the mid-1880s the Newnham and Girton College registers record system­ atically where their students went to school. Table 1 shows that in 1885-99 and in 1900-14 two different pairs of girls’ schools sent the largest number of classicists to Cambridge. Public day schools dominate the table although the public boarding schools were increasingly successful. The strength of the new girls’ schools is clear since the schools in Table 1 produced 29% of the women classicists who took Part I in 1885-99 and 32% of those who took the tripos in 1900-14. The private domestic boarding schools could not compete with these new, more academic schools; not surprisingly none appears in Table 1. However, the broad curricula of the new, more academic, schools for girls usually marginalised classics. Alleyn’s High School for Girls was supposed to be equal in status to Dulwich College, but no Greek was taught at the girls’ school. Greek was held to be dispensable for girls but important for boys since it was necessary for those who intended to go to university.12 In girls’ schools, Greek was often sacrificed to the cause of a broad curriculum. Although Latin was usually retained, girls were generally not taught it until they were twelve, whilst Greek was not begun until the age of fifteen, if at all.13 Even at St Felix School, which followed the boys’ public school model, no Greek was taught until the fifth form.14 Sara Burstall argued that, despite starting so late, girls studying Latin could ‘make progress at a rate which surprises the master in a boys’ school’ and that those taking up Greek at fifteen ‘often excel in it’.15 No doubt the best girls did do very well compared with some boys, but in relation to the best boys who had had several years’ more teaching, they were at a considerable disadvantage. 9

10

11 12 13 14 15

The Endowed Schools Com m issioners set up 47 high schools for girls in 1869-74; the Charity Com m issioners set up 47 in 1874-1903; the G irls’ Public Day School Com pany set up 38 in 1873—1901; and the Church Schools’ Com pany set up 24 in 1883-96 (Fletcher (1980) 151; Kamm (1971) 207-15). This group included St L eonard’s School, Roedean, W ycom be Abbey and Cheltenham L adies’ College, which was founded as a day school in 1854 but was taking mainly boarders by the 1890s (Dyhouse (1981) 56). G irls’ school yearbook 9 (1914) 143, 176, 1 89,249,350. Fletcher (1980) 107-9. Burstall (1907) 110. G irls’ schools yearbook (1914) 307. Burstall (1907) 110.

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CLAIRE BREAY

T a b le 1: S ch o o ls w ith six o r m o re stu d en ts at G irton o r N ew n h a m w h o to o k the C la ssica l T rip o s

Category

School

Students in residence

1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 9

Notting Hill High School North London Collegiate School St Leonard’s School, St Andrews King Edward VI High School, Birmingham South Hampstead High School

20 16 8 6 6

D/ESC B D/ESC B D/GPDSC B D/ESC D/ESC D/GPDSC

King Edward VI High School, Birmingham St Leonard’s School, St Andrews Bedford High School St Felix School, Southwold Blackheath High School Cheltenham Ladies’ College' Leeds High School Orme Girls’ School Wimbledon High School

15 13 7 7 7 6 6 6 6

D: Day School B: Boarding School

GPDSC: Founded by the Girls’ Public Day School Company ESC: Founded by the Endowed Schools Commissioners

D/GPDSC D B D/ESC D/GPDSC 1 9 0 0 -1 4

Boys at preparatory schools started learning Latin grammar and syntax when they were eight. By the age of twelve, when girls were just beginning Latin, many boys had started Greek and were learning Greek and Latin verse and prose composition.16Whilst there were variations in practice between boys’ schools, boys usually spent longer on Greek and Latin at school than girls. This advantage was increased by the greater num ber o f hours norm ally devoted to Latin and G reek each w eek in b o y s’ schools.

In 1906 the curricula committee of the Classical Association published its survey of the amount and type of classical teaching in all the Headmasters’ Conference schools and in ‘certain girls’ schools’. It found that in larger public schools, the boys in the highest classical form devoted almost all their time to classics, often in preparation for university examinations. In the other forms, boys spent 12 to 15 hours per week on Latin and Greek. In smaller public schools, the average number of hours spent on classics was 8 per week in the lower forms and 18lA in the highest. In contrast, girls in day schools which had classes only in the morning typically studied Latin for TA to 3 A hours per week; girls in 16 Stray (1986) 16.

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53

day schools with morning and afternoon sessions had 1-3 hours more per week; whilst girls in boarding schools spent at least 5-7 hours a week on Latin. In the highest forms, girls could specialise and spend from 8 hours, in day schools, to 18 hours in boarding schools on classics.17This meant that some girls at some boarding schools were spending as much time on classics as the boys in smaller public schools. However, such parity in the highest forms of these schools could not compensate for the extra hours of teaching in Latin and Greek which boys had received every week for many years. The curricula committee found that in most girls’ schools the aim of the teaching seems to be directed towards acquiring facility in translation ... composition, except of the simplest type, is not usually attempted until the sixth year, and the time allotted to grammar rarely exceeds one-quarter of the total ... Verse is not attempted at all.18 With Greek, girls devoted an even greater proportion of time to translation than with Latin. This did not mean, though, that girls could build up an advantage over boys in translation, because their total amount of teaching in Latin and Greek was so much smaller. The limitations in the teaching of classics in girls’ schools inevitably put women at a disadvantage in the Classical Tripos. The curricula committee of the Classical Association advised that in the lower and middle forms of boys’ public schools, whereas Latin should be taught with a view to the correct writing of the language as well as the intelligent reading of Latin authors, Greek should be taught only with a view to the intelligent reading of Greek authors.19 This resolution had the potential partially to reduce boys’ advantage over girls, but the potential was not likely to be fulfilled: composition was entrenched in the system of boys’ preparatory and public schools, and it retained its status at Oxford and Cambridge. Boys’ schools, with a reputation for academic success, could not afford to threaten their pupils’ preparation for university; girls’ schools, with their broad curricula, could not afford to allow significant specialisation in Latin and Greek. Women arriving at Newnham and Girton found that The principal drawbacks of the Classical Tripos ... all spring from one original evil - insufficient preparation.’20 In 1875 Jane Harrison persuaded Margaret Merrifield to read classics instead of political economy and moral science, ‘though she knew little Latin and no Greek’.21 In 1906 Francesca Wilson passed the college entrance examination despite having ‘only had six months of Greek’, because Miss Sharpley thought she ‘showed promise’.22 17 18 19 20 21 22

PC A 3 (1906) 85-96. PCA 3 (1906)91. Ibid. Girton Review 3 (Dec. 1882) 5. Newnham College Club (1916) 54. W ilson (1979) 65.

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Even Helen Magill, who came to Cambridge in 1877 having already completed her Ph.D. in Greek at Boston University, found that her classical scholarship was ‘nothing beside the standard at Cambridge’. Magill thought that although she came ‘much better prepared ... than any of the women’, in composition she was ‘not nearly so well prepared as the men’.23 In the Tripos examinations, she excelled in the philosophy paper, but because she omitted the verse papers and did badly in prose composition, she got a Third.24 The women’s colleges had to admit women classicists who needed considerable remedial teaching. The efforts needed to make up lost ground could be very timeconsuming: A girl coming up from High School, with the usual small allowance of Latin and utter ignorance of Greek, will find herself, at the end of three years’ hard and disappointing work, in the position she ought to have been in when starting her work for the Tripos.25 There were some exceptional students who came to the women’s colleges well prepared for the work in Part I. For example Dora Ivens, a pupil at King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham, read classics at Girton from 1910-14 and in Part I was placed in the second division of the first class. Whilst at school, she had taken the Senior Cambridge Examination: she came second in England in Latin, a boy being first, but in Greek she beat him and came first.26 Despite this achievement, a Schools’ Inspector had warned that she would be unlikely to get a classical scholarship at Cambridge because she had not read enough.27 Ivens proved him wrong by being awarded a scholarship at Girton.28 The women’s colleges had few applicants with so thorough a preparation in Latin and Greek; Girton could not afford to reject Ivens on the grounds that she had not read enough. Despite such exceptions, most women continued to arrive at Cambridge under­ prepared for classical study, but the developments in girls’ schooling meant that an increasing proportion of the students had had a coherently organised secondary education, even if it had not included much Latin or Greek. This helped both the women who read classics and the men and women who organised their teaching. However, the teaching provided at N ew nham and G irton still had to concentrate on reducing the

disadvantages caused by the differences between the schooling of girls and boys.

23 Cornell University archives, collection no. 4107 (Helen M agill W hite papers), letter from Helen Magill to her father, 15 Oct. 1877. 24 Cornell University archives, collection no. 4107, letter from Helen M agill to her mother, 7 March 1881; letter from M agill to her father, 25 March 1881. 25 Girton Review 3 (Dec. 1882) 5. 26 Dora Pym (née Ivens), ‘Patchwork from the past’, unpublished m em oirs (n.d.) Ill 2 6 3 .1 am very grateful to Miss M. Pym for allowing me to read and cite her m other’s memoirs. 27 Pym III 304. 28 Pym III 306, 309.

W OM EN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914

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2. Classical teaching for women at Cambridge The teaching of women classicists at Cambridge changed considerably between 1869 and 1914, mainly because the standard of entrants to the women’s colleges rose, but also because the University’s attitude to women students changed. The differing educational ideologies of the women’s colleges were significant too. Henry Sidgwick believed that the causes of university reform and the higher education of women were fundamentally interlinked. Because of his influence, students at Newnham did not have to take the preliminary Previous Examination with its compulsory Greek element, did not have to keep to the University’s residence requirements, and were encouraged to study the newer subjects. In Newnham’s early years, there was ‘no regulation requiring students to read for any examination’,29 and the women’s aspirations ‘did not at first soar above the Higher Local and when that was safely passed the idea of a Tripos gradually dawned on the horizons of a few’.30 In contrast, Emily Davies insisted that Girton students should adhere to the University’s regulations about courses and exam­ inations.31 Whilst Sidgwick aimed at broad, integrated reform within the University and beyond, Davies was more pragmatic. Her action was based on the immediate need for women to be given access to, and recognition in, higher education. Opponents of the higher education of women argued that women had a ‘marked inferiority of intellectual power’ which ‘displays itself most conspicuously in a comparative absence of originality’.32 Such attitudes made Davies all the more determined that women had to compete with men on equal terms, so she encouraged students to read classics or mathematics, the two most prestigious Triposes.33 M.A. Bennett claimed that this acceptance of the existing course of education was a sign that women ‘prefer to be followers rather than leaders in educational reform’.34 Davies, though, was not complacently following the male pattern. Rather, she sought to pursue the radical policy of advancing the movement for the higher education of women, even though she had to use reactionary elements, including classics, to achieve her ends. The problem with Davies’ strategy was that most women classicists struggled to compete on equal terms with men since few had had a thorough grounding in classics at school. According to Sara Burstall, ‘In Classics, where one can eliminate the advantage boys have through spending a bigger time on the subject, the girls do as well.’35 However, eliminating this advantage proved very difficult. In the 1880s, the proportion of Newnham students preparing for University exami­ nations increased and the college became much more similar to Girton.36 Four-fifths 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Newnham College Report (June 1880) 4. Newnham College Club (1884) 1. M cW illiam s-Tullberg (1975) 44-5, 58. Romanes (1887) 654-5. M cW illiam s-Tullberg (1975) 63. Bennett (1879-80) 69. Burstall (1907) 13. Clough (1897) 318.

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of the students in residence at Newnham in 1885 went on to take a Tripos and by 1902 all but six of the 165 students were reading for a Tripos.37 Despite ideological disagreements, considerable similarities between Newnham and Girton were inevitable because both colleges had to teach under-prepared students. Girton stressed the importance of women taking the Previous Examination as men did; Newnham preferred the alternative of the Higher Local Examinations. Neither college, though, could overcome the disadvantages women students faced in Tripos examinations through having to spend much longer than their male peers preparing for the preliminary examinations. The Previous Examination, known as ‘Little-Go’, was very important for the students at the College for Women at Hitchin, the forerunner of Girton College: ‘It is half melancholy, half laughable to recall the importance which the Little-Go possessed in the eyes of the first women who faced the ordeal.’38 But Henry Sidgwick, one of its most vehement critics because of the compulsory Greek element, justifiably believed that ‘if they pass the examination, the Cambridge world will not be particularly impressed’.39 However, both Little-Go at Girton and Higher Locals at Newnham were formidable obstacles for the early women students who had to spend two or three years preparing for them. Between 1880 and 1900 the standard of entrants to the women’s colleges increased substantially. The amount of time and resources devoted to Little-Go and Higher Locals fell dramatically as a result. In 1880 the Newnham College Report stated: ‘Students are for the most part preparing themselves either for the various branches of the Cambridge Higher Local Examination, or for one or another of the Honour Examinations of the University.’40 The following year, the information was different: ‘The complete normal course of study at Newnham College involves preparation for a Tripos Examination.’41 The college provided teaching in almost all of the subjects of the Higher Local Examination in 1881. By December 1897, this provision was limited to the Michaelmas term, and in November 1898 the Report declared: ‘The College does not in general provide instruction for the Higher Local Examination, or for the Previous Examination. These Examinations should be prepared for and passed as far as possible before coming into residence.’42 Some remedial teaching for women classicists remained necessary in the early twentieth century because most women were still less well prepared than their male peers when their courses began. However, the rising standards achieved by girls’ schools meant that by 1900 women could at least devote three full years to Tripos work. When higher education for women began in Cambridge, women classicists were taught solely by men. Despite the low standards of the early students, Newnham, like Girton, was able to provide teaching for women because 37 38 39 40 41 42

Clough (1897) 317; Newnham College Report (1902) 30. Girton Review 1 (M arch 1882) 6. An extract from a letter by Henry Sidgwick to his mother, quoted in Sidgwick and Sidgwick (1906) 242. Newnham College Report (June 1880) 2. Newnham College Report (May 1881)6. Newnham College Report (Dec. 1897) 22; (Nov. 1898) 11.

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a good many brilliant teachers - in their belief in the cause of women’s education - were ready to give instruction to women students often in a far more elementary stage than the men they usually taught.43 The fees paid for such teaching were often returned ‘while the cause was still struggling’.44 At Newnham, Professor Mayor taught the first students Latin, ‘putting his vast erudition at the service of girls not very sound in declensions and conju­ gations’,45 whilst at Girton ‘Senior Classics lectured on the Little-Go subjects’.46 Newnham College did not have its own classics lecturer until Margaret Merrifield was appointed in preference to Jane Harrison in 1880, whereas Girton had Louisa Lumsden from 1873-5 and replaced her with Elizabeth Welsh in 1876. Before 1914 the great majority of the classics lecturers at Newnham and Girton came from the men’s colleges, but the female resident lecturers did far more hours of teaching than these men. In the Michaelmas term of 1878, Miss Welsh gave 19 hours of lectures a week at Girton, whereas the five male lecturers gave between 3 and 5M hours each a week. By 1881 Miss Welsh was teaching for 27]A hours a week.47 The lists of Girton lecturers given in the Girton Review between 1882 and 1890 suggest that the men’s lectures were seen as the core of the teaching and that the job of the resident lecturer was to fill the many gaps. The male lecturers were always listed first and the subject of their lectures was given; Miss Welsh was at the foot of the lists which said only that she lectured on ‘other classical subjects’ 48 In 1882 the executive committee of Girton College resolved ‘that as a general rule, the resident lecturers be expected to undertake the teaching for the Previous Examination’.49 Whilst the amount of teaching required for this examination fell as entrance standards rose, this decision confirmed the weighting of resident lecturers’ work towards the elementary end of college teaching. In 1876 Elizabeth Welsh was appointed as resident lecturer because of the need for someone ‘to help the first year students in ... the difficulties of actually beginning a language’.50 Similarly at Newnham, Edith Sharpley - college lecturer in classics from 1884 to 1910 - ‘did much for those students who came up inadequately prepared for classical work’.51 The division of responsibilities was not rigid but varied with the individual resident lecturer: Miss Matthaei did more Tripos teaching than Miss Sharpley at Newnham; Miss Jex-Blake did more than Miss Welsh at Girton. Even so, when Miss Jex-Blake had a term’s leave of absence in 1888, her replacement, Miss Daniel, was required to do 15 hours of teaching a week ‘chiefly for General and Little-Go 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

G ardner (1921) 16. Ibid. Newnham College Club ( 1910) 67. Girton Review 1 (M arch 1882) 6. Girton College archives, executive com m ittee minutes V 160-2, VII 52-5. Girton Review 2-2 7 (July 1882 - Dec. 1890). Girton College archives, executive com m ittee minutes VII 119. Girton College archives, executive com m ittee minutes IV 101-2. Newnham College Roll L etter ( 1941 ) 31.

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candidates’.52 Once the colleges for women became well established, the men who lectured there did much less elementary teaching. Moreover, Newnham and Girton found that, whereas in their early years ‘lecturers gave their teaching for quite inadequate remuneration, and often for none’,53 it later became necessary to respond to their arguments that 10s. 6d. an hour was ‘insufficient remuneration for a lecture which involved much preparation’.54 The relationship between the women’s colleges and the men who lectured there became more formal. The men assumed a greater role in the teaching for Tripos exam­ inations taken by a growing number of women. Newnham and Girton could not provide enough teaching without the support of men from the University who covered the wide range of literary and linguistic subjects in Part I, and who provided the more specialised teaching for the minority of students who took Part II. The admission of women to lectures in the men’s colleges came only after the reor­ ganisation of classics teaching for men in the later nineteenth century. Until then, the colleges had restricted access to their lectures to their own members, so there could be lectures on the same subjects in the same term in all colleges. Whilst competition between the colleges hindered co-operation for many years, in 1868 Christ’s, St John’s, Corpus Christi, Jesus and Trinity Colleges agreed to split the lectures for the Classical Tripos between them.55 By 1880 intercollegiate lecturing was firmly established. The lectures reflected the bias of Part I: almost all dealt with literary or linguistic subjects, although by the 1890s other classical subjects were covered.56 The intercollegiate system of lecturing broke a significant barrier between the men’s colleges and introduced some flexibility which probably helped to reduce resistance to the attendance of women. University professors set a precedent when the majority of them opened their lectures to women in the 1870s.57 Whilst this development gave support to the movement for the higher education of women in Cambridge, these lectures were not related to the Tripos syllabus. The breakthrough came in 1876 when Christ’s became the first college to admit women to its lectures;58 King’s, then Trinity, soon followed suit. Very quickly, women classicists had access to a new pool of teaching. The men who had taught in the women’s colleges benefited too since they no longer needed to repeat their lectures for women students.59 Despite the new access to intercollegiate lectures, women classicists were still taught mainly in their colleges - by both women and men - for a considerable time. For example, in 1882-4 the only lectures which Girton classicists attended in Cambridge

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Girton College archives, executive com m ittee m inutes X 168-9. Clough (1897) 181. Newnham College archives, education com m ittee minutes IV 28 April 1903. Rothblatt (1968) 230. ‘Open classical lectures’, CUR (5 Oct. 1880) 19; (6 Oct. 1890) 10-11. Clough (1897) 170. Gardner (1921) 40. G ardner (1921) 41.

W OM EN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914

59

were those of Richard Archer-Hind on Plato.60 Lectures in the men’s colleges had become much more popular by the time Dora Ivens went to Girton in 1910. Even then ‘there was a small minority of men dons who would not have women at their lectures’, but intercollegiate lectures had become an important supplement to college teaching rather than an occasional bonus.61 In her first year, Ivens went to T.R. Glover’s lectures on ancient history, J.C. Lawson’s on Aeschylus, and A.B. Cook’s on Greek sculpture. She took Part I in 1913 having been to H. Rackham’s lectures on the Republic at Christ’s, and to A.E. Housman’s professorial lectures on Horace, whilst ‘all the others went to J.T. Sheppard of King’s on Greek Tragedy’.62 The minority of women classicists who took Part II needed much specialised teaching, most of which could not be provided in college. The Newnham College Report of 1902 stated that: ‘For the second part of the Mathematical, Classical, Moral Science and Natural Sciences Triposes ... the instruction is almost wholly provided by the University.’63 However, most women classicists received the majority of their teaching in college. This teaching was a mixture of ‘lectures and what are now called super­ visions but were then called coachings’.64 At Newnham College, there was a meeting of classical lecturers at the end of each term ‘to discuss plans and make arrangements for next term’s work’; but it was Richard Archer-Hind, a Fellow at Trinity College, who ‘really organised the classical teaching’ and was ‘chief classical lecturer’ from 1875 until 1908.65 The resident classical lecturers at Girton, Elizabeth Welsh (1876-84) and Katharine Jex-Blake (1885-1901), took joint responsibility with the Mistress for arranging teaching in their college, until Jex-Blake was made Director of Studies in Classics in 1901. Even so, the division of the labour between men and women followed a similar pattern to that at Newnham. Like the female resident lecturers, male lecturers also provided supervisions, mainly on translation and composition. In her first year, Dora Ivens was supervised by Mr W.N. Williams of Selwyn on Latin prose and Miss Alford from Westfield College on Latin unseens. Her Director of Studies, Miss Jex-Blake, took her for Greek prose and unseens, and for Latin verse. For the latter, Ivens used a book ‘written for youngish schoolboys’. She found that Jex-Blake’s teaching ‘was like a class in school. We had to read round and translate every word.’ Jex-Blake told her years later that ‘no man could be trusted to make us do this.’66 After her first year, Ivens was supervised almost wholly by men: the division between male and female lecturers at the women’s colleges existed between the supervisors too. In her second year she had J.M. Edmonds, who set her a piece of both 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Girton Review 3 -8 (Dec. 1882 - July 1884): terminal M istresses’s reports. Pym IV 354. Pym IV 333, 3 6 7 -8 ,4 1 5 -1 6 ,4 5 5 . Newnham College Report (Jan. 1902) 11. Pym IV 332-3. Newnham College Club (1916) 56; Newnham College Report (1911) 25. Pym IV 333.

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Latin and Greek prose and verse every week.67 In addition, ‘You were expected to have read so much Greek and Latin that anything might be set for translation in the unseen papers.’68 Many women had their workload reduced by not taking verse composition. To minimise the disadvantages such women faced, Newnham decided in 1901 that students not taking verse should have twenty minutes extra teaching each week on prose.69 The Newnham and Girton resident lecturers had most contact with the students and had to assess which students should take the verse papers. Resident lecturers were the administrative focus of the teaching of women, but they were increasingly responsible for elementary work, whilst the male lecturers and supervisors concentrated on more advanced teaching. Jane Harrison was exceptional: ‘exceptional in appearance, character and intellect’.70 Harrison was one of the earliest students at Newnham to take the then undivided Classical Tripos. She was unofficially placed in the second class in 1879 ‘despite getting the highest marks of the year in philosophy’.71 The following year Margaret Merrifield was similarly told she had ‘attained a second class standard in Classics’J 2Harrison claimed that she was responsible for persuading Merrifield to read classics and, as Harrison wrote in Merrifield’s obituary, ‘her appointment as classical lecturer came as a surprise. I was her senior, and we had often talked over what the classical work was to be when I was appointed.’73 In 1880 Newnham needed a resident lecturer who would take on a considerable teaching load. Merrifield, and Sharpley after her, were prepared to do this; Harrison was too interested in her own archaeological research. She moved to London where she stayed until 1898. After leaving Newnham, Harrison lectured on Greek art at the British Museum and travelled to Greece. In 1890 she published The mythology and monuments of ancient Athens which established her academic reputation. In the same year Harrison was asked to lecture for the college on ‘some subject in classical archaeology’. Newnham decided to ask the Classical Board to recognise the lectures and to allow them to be given in the Archaeological Museum’s lecture room.74 Newnham’s relationship with Harrison was changing. In 1880 Newnham was still small and needed someone to do the basic teaching for Part I: the college could not afford to support Harrison’s archaeological specialisms. By 1890, Newnham realised that it could benefit by association with ‘one of the most distinguished of our old students’. Her lectures at the Archaeological Museum, the first given by a woman in University buildings, ‘were largely attended by Members of the University as well as by students of Newnham and Girton.’75 Harrison’s links with Newnham were more firmly re­ established in 1894 when she became a member of the college council. 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Pym IV 392. Pym IV 459. Newnham College archives, education com m ittee minutes IV 24 Jan. 1901. Newnham College Roll Letter (1929) 63. Newnham College Roll Letter (1929) 52. Newnham College Report (N ov. 1880) 16. Newnham College Club (1916) 54-5. Newnham College archives, education com m ittee minutes IV 11 June 1890. Newnham College Club (1890) 12.

W OM EN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914

61

By the end of the century Newnham’s relationship with Harrison had changed again. In 1898 she came back into residence and in 1899 she became a staff lecturer in classical archaeology, ‘under special conditions’.76 She gave a course of lectures on Delphi in the Michaelmas and Lent terms at the Archaeological Museum, and a weekly lecture at Newnham on the topography of Athens and the Parthenon Marbles.77 The college gave her very few teaching commitments and in 1900-3 she became the first holder of an Associates’ Research Fellowship. Although Harrison had agreed to lecture in two terms of each year, the college allowed her the freedom to rearrange her teaching to suit her research. At the meeting of the college council on 16 February 1901, a letter from Harrison was read, ‘asking for leave of absence during the rest of the Lent term and during the Easter term in order to spend the time in Italy and Greece on work connected with her fellowship’.78 The council did not object then, nor in May 1908 when she asked for ‘leave not to lecture during the ensuing year, on account of literary work’.79 Newnham could now afford to look beyond its immediate needs and have Harrison on its staff. By 1899, in contrast to 1880, the structure of classical teaching in the college was firmly established: Harrison’s position at Newnham did not now have to be justified by the amount of teaching she might do. Whilst she was at Newnham, Harrison published her two most important works, Prolegomena to the study o f Greek religion (1903) and Themis (1912). The college was no longer merely teaching classicists; it had become a base for classical research. Although Harrison’s research was in a field which was marginal in the Tripos, it gave her ‘a leader’s place’ in the ‘revolution in archaeological scholarship’.80 Harrison’s research broadened the range of academic activity at Newnham so that the college began to become more like the men’s colleges. Newnham treated Harrison as the men’s colleges treated some of their fellows. G.L. Dickinson’s work at King’s was ‘so arranged as to give him the utmost freedom compatible with a post on the teaching staff’. Like Harrison, Dickinson did a little lecturing and, again like her, ‘Being free to come and go as the spirit moved him, Dickinson was able to develop all his powers by contact with wider circles than purely academic.’81 The ‘special conditions’ under which Harrison was appointed were valuable both to her and to Newnham. Before her return to Newnham in 1898, Harrison had failed twice to secure the Yates profes­ sorship in archaeology at London. Newnham gave her the opportunity which she would have had as Professor to concentrate on her research. What little teaching Harrison did consisted mainly of lectures for those few students who took Section D of Part II:82 ‘she did not lecture to ordinary classical students, but 76 NCR I, 1871-1923 (1979) 9. 77 Newnham College Club (1898) 6; (1899) 6-7, 15; Newnham College archives, ‘North Hall diary’, M ichaelm as term 1898. 78 Newnham College archives, council minutes III 63. 79 Newnham College archives, council minutes III 169. 80 Newnham College Roll L etter (1929) 77. 81 N. W edd, ‘M em oir of G.L. D ickinson’ (Cambridge, K ing’s College archives, Misc. 28/5) 7. 82 Lists of Newnham College lectures, Cambridge University Reporter, 1900-14.

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wrote books and articles’.83 Whilst she was a lecturer at Newnham (1899-1922) Harrison published nine books; Edith Sharpley, classics lecturer from 1884 to 1910, published nothing.84 Sharpley was a teacher; Harrison did research. Newnham needed both, and by 1899 it could have both. The same teaching structure which made Sharpley concentrate on elementary teaching allowed Harrison her academic freedom.

3. Women's achievements in the Tripos Girton and Newnham adapted the style of classical teaching given in the men’s colleges to suit the needs of their students, but women ultimately sat the same examination as men. Before 1881 women were not statutorily entitled to sit University examinations. Each year the women’s colleges had to ask the examiners to make the papers available to their students and to mark them unofficially. The examiners for the Classical Tripos were not obstructive, but the position of women was strengthened in 1881 when the University allowed them officially to take Tripos examinations. Women’s results were then published formally, though in class-lists separate from those of the men. Although women who passed the examinations could not claim a degree, the University did at least now recognise their achievements.85 The content of the Classical Tripos, which was founded only in 1822, was reviewed several times before 1914. These alterations, which were intended to broaden the Tripos, should have given women the opportunity to tackle it on a more equal basis, but in practice the impact of the changes was limited. The most important change came in 1879 when the previously undivided Tripos was split into two parts. However, few students, male or female, took Part II. Since men could qualify for their degrees by taking only Part I, which was dominated by translation and composition papers, there was little incentive for those who did not wish to pursue an academic career to take Part II. For women, Part II offered the possibility of specialising in philosophy, history, archaeology or philology, and of escaping, at least partially, from the limitations of their linguistic training. Despite this, most women took only Part I for reasons spelt out in the Girton Review. Whilst the division of the Tripos ‘put some of the most interesting work’ in Part II, It will, I fear, be long before any Girton student will be sufficiently prepared to take the First Part of the Tripos at the end of her second year, and very few are able to remain at the college during four years.86 For the majority of classicists who took only Part I, the division of the Tripos led to an even greater concentration on linguistic and literary work than in the undivided Tripos 83 84 85 86

Pym IV 363. NCR I, 1871-1923 (1979) 6, 9. M cW illiam s-Tullberg (1975) ch. 5. Girton Review 3 (Dec. 1882) 5.

W OM EN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914

63

which had had compulsory papers on philosophy, philology and history. Part I therefore gave many men still more opportunity to exploit their linguistic skills. Even after the Tripos reforms of 1900, Part I continued to be dominated by translation and composition. It was impossible to excel in Part I without doing well in these papers. Most women had to struggle to develop the skills of prose composition in three years, but many arrived at Cambridge with no experience in verse composition at all. Since learning verse composition was time-consuming, beginning it at Cambridge tended to jeopardise work for other papers. As a result ‘not to take it seems the safer rule for ordinary mortals’,87Those forced into this decision by their schooling could concentrate their study on the rest of their work, but could not excel in the Tripos. Helen Magill, who took the undivided Tripos in 1881, was told that ‘all chance of a First is lost by the fact that I take neither verse paper’.88 Dora Ivens found that, even when she took her Part I in 1913, few other women sat the verse composition papers with her.89Women who opted out of verse could devote more time to their other papers but almost certainly could not get a First. Dora Ivens’ friend, Nannie Drummond, also took Part I in 1913. Ivens got a First, whilst ‘Nannie was at the top of the second class and she would very likely have had a First too, if she had taken Verse Composition.’90 Women usually found it hard to escape the influence of their schooling on their examination results. Table 2 shows how many classicists at Newnham, Girton and the men’s colleges got Firsts in Part I in 1885-1914. Whilst the percentage of men and women getting Firsts gradually increased, in every block of ten years, the proportion of men getting Firsts was just over twice that of women. Taken separately, the pattern of Firsts at Newnham and Girton was not identical. Newnham had its greatest percentage in 1895-1904, whilst Girton had its smallest then, but, since the total number of women getting Firsts in any one period of ten years was small, such fluctuations are not surprising. It is more significant that, even in 1895-1904 at Newnham and in 1905-14 at Girton, when over 15% of women at each college got Firsts, this was still substantially less than the percentage of men getting Firsts - 25.6% in 1895-1904 and 27.9% in 1905-14. Despite the ideological differences between Girton and Newnham, there was an overriding pattern in women’s results, distinct from the pattern of men’s results. Table 3 shows the number of women who attained the standards of first-, secondand third-class and ordinary degrees in Part I. At Newnham, the percentage of women getting seconds rose from 32.7% in 1885-94 to 51.2% in 1905-14, whilst the percentage of Thirds fell correspondingly from 53.1% to 32.6%. Although the pattern at Girton did not show this consistent trend, it is clear that at both Newnham and Girton it remained far more common for women to get a Second or a Third than a First. The 87 Ibid. 88 Cornell University archives, collection no. 4107 (Helen M agill W hite papers), letter from Helen Magill to her mother, 21 Nov. 1880. 89 Pym IV 468. 90 Pym IV 464.

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Table 2: Classicists taking Part I D a te

N o . o f c la s s i c i s ts t a k in g P a r t I

N o . o f F ir s ts

(% »

Girton 1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

80

10

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

66

5

( 1 2 .5 ) ( 7 .6 )

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

73

11

( 1 5 .1 )

1885-1914

219

26

(11.9)

Newnham 1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

49

5

( 1 0 .2 )

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

71

11

( 1 5 .5 )

1 9 0 4 -1 9 1 4

86

11

( 1 2 .8 )

1885-1914

206

27

(13.1)

1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

129

15

( 1 1 .6 )

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

13 7

16

( 1 1 .7 )

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

159

22

( 1 3 .8 )

1885-1914

425

53

(12.5)

1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

1061

249

( 2 3 .5 )

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

1135

290

( 2 5 .6 )

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

1000

279

( 2 7 .9 )

1885-1914

3196

818

(25.6)

All women

All men

nature of the examination and women’s ill-preparedness for it meant that women did less well overall than men in Part I. However, the minority of women who took Part II found that this examination, despite being designed for men, did allow them to compete on more equal terms. From its inception, Part II was divided into five sections. Section A consisted of four papers, two in translation into English, and two in prose composition. Section B dealt with ancient philosophy, C with history, D with archaeology and E with philology. Until 1895 all candidates had to offer Section A as well as either one or two of the other sections, and no candidate could pass overall without passing Section A. However, students could only qualify for a First by attaining a first-class standard in one or two of Sections B, C, D and E.

65

W OM EN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914

Table 3: Women’s Part I results D a te

C la s s I ( % )

C la s s II ( % )

C la s s I I I ( % )

O r d in a r y

(%)

T o ta l

Girton 1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

1 0 ( 1 2 .5 )

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

5 ( 7 .6 )

3 3 ( 4 1 .3 )

3 2 (4 0 )

5 ( 6 .3 )

3 5 (5 3 )

2 6 ( 3 9 .4 )

0

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

11 ( 1 5 .1 )

2 6 ( 3 5 .6 )

3 2 ( 4 3 .8 )

4 ( 5 .5 )

1885-1914

26 (11.9)

94 (42.9)

90 (41.1)

9 (4.1)

80 66 73 219

Newnham 1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

5 ( 1 0 .2 )

1 6 ( 3 2 .7 )

2 6 ( 5 3 .1 )

2 ( 4 .1 )

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

11 ( 1 5 .5 )

31 ( 4 3 .7 )

2 6 ( 3 6 .7 )

3 ( 4 .2 )

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

11 ( 1 2 .8 )

4 4 ( 5 1 .2 )

2 8 ( 3 2 .6 )

3 ( 3 .5 )

1885-1914

27 (13.1)

91 (44.2)

80 (38.8)

8 (3.9)

1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

15 ( 1 1 .6 )

4 9 (3 8 )

5 8 (4 5 )

7 ( 5 .4 )

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

1 6 ( 1 1 .7 )

6 6 ( 4 8 .2 )

5 2 (3 8 )

3 ( 2 .2 )

49 71 86 206

All women

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

2 2 ( 1 3 .8 )

7 0 (4 4 )

1885-1914

53 (12.5)

185 (43.5)

6 0 ( 3 7 .7 )

170 (40)

7 ( 4 .4 )

17 (4)

129 137 159 425

In 1895 the regulations for Part II changed to give candidates a free choice of either one or two of the five sections. Section A became an optional section called ‘literature and criticism’. Students could now get a First on the strength of Section A alone, although four of its eight papers were still devoted to translation and prose composition.91 As far as the women who took Part II were concerned, the most important aspect of the new Section A was that it was optional. Whilst there were passages for translation in some of the papers in each of the Sections B, C, D and E, after 1895 women no longer had to take composition papers in Part II. It is not clear how many men and women took each section because the class-lists do not reveal which sections students who got Seconds or Thirds had taken. The lists show only the section or sections for which candidates with Firsts were placed in that class.92 Many of those who did get Firsts may also have taken another section in which they did not achieve a first-class standard and which is therefore invisible in the class-lists. 91 Cambridge University Calendar (1895-6) 49. 92 Before 1895 an ‘a ’ with another letter after a name on the class list showed that that student had also achieved a first-class standard in the com pulsory Section A, although this alone was not then a quali­ fication for a First.

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Table 4 shows the sections for which men and women - who had taken Part I in 1885-1914 - got Firsts in Part II. In 1885-94, 37 of the 90 men who got Firsts also got a first-class standard in the then compulsory Section A, which tested only prose composition and translation. When Section A became optional and broadened into ‘literature and criticism’, only six out of 65 men got a First on the strength of it in 1895-1904, and five out of 38 in 1905-14. Before 1895 men had done well in Section A because its papers were similar to the Part I papers they had been long prepared for. After Section A changed in 1895, most of the men who got Firsts used Part II to specialise in the other sections. Thirty-nine of the women who took Part I in 1885-1914 went on to get Firsts in Part II; only two, both from Girton, got a first-class standard in Section A. Margaret Taylor, who took Part II in 1893, was the only woman with a First who also got a first-class standard in the old, compulsory Section A; she gained her place in the first class on the strength of her work in Section B. In 1912 Ethel Steuart became the only woman in

T a b le

4:

T h e s e c tio n s f o r w h ic h c a n d id a te s w h o a c h ie v e d a F i r s t in P a r t

II

w ere

p la c e d in th e f i r s t c la s s

No. of students achieving first-class standard in section

A

B

D

C

Total no. of students awarded a first-class degree E

G irto n 1 8 8 5 -1 9 1 4

2

8

3

3

0

15

0

8

2

10

4

24

1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

37

27

28

15

19

90

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

6

23

16

17

3

65

N ew nham 1 8 8 5 -1 9 1 4

A ll m e n

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

5

9

13

7

4

38

1885-1914

48

59

57

39

26

193

Notes 1. W here candidates achieved a first-class standard in more than one section, each section is counted separately in the table. 2. All dates in this table refer to the year in which the candidates took Part I.

W OM EN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914

67

1895-1914 to get a First in the new Section A in literature and criticism. How many more women took Section A and got Seconds or Thirds is not known, but Dora Ivens’ memoirs reveal that she was one of at least two such women at Girton. Ivens, who wanted to take Section A, ‘had a struggle with Miss Jex-Blake’ over her Part II. Jex-Blake warned: YouTl only get a Second if you take Section A ... it is really all textual criticism, not the literature you think. You have not read enough to tackle it. In history or archaeology you could certainly get a First.93 Although Section A was now broader, women were still advised that, if they took it, they would be at a disadvantage when competing with men. Dora Ivens talked to Dorothy Brock who had taken Part II in 1908. ‘She had taken Section A and could recommend it; she had also survived getting a Second.’94 Ivens insisted on taking Section A and got a Third. Mr Duke, who had taught her for Part II, discovered from an examiner that she had achieved second-class marks but that Professor Platt had ‘absolutely refused’ to let her have a Second because her ‘textual criticism was not good enough’.95 Most women who got Firsts in Part II got them by taking sections B, C, D or E after 1895, or without getting an additional first-class standard in Section A before 1895. Katharine Jex-Blake’s advice to Dora Ivens suggests that this pattern was not merely the result of more women taking Sections B, C, D and E in Part II, but because these sections did offer more opportunity for women to excel. Eight women from Newnham and eight more from Girton - who had taken Part I in 1895-1914 - got Firsts in Part II by specialising in philosophy. Another ten from Newnham, doubtless influenced by Jane Harrison, and a further three from Girton got Firsts in archaeology. Part II remained an examination taken only by a minority of classicists, but fluc­ tuations in the size of this minority were significant. Table 5 shows that the number of men who took Part II after having taken Part I in 1905-14 was less than half the number who took Part II after a Part I in 1885-94. The chance to specialise within Part II having already qualified for a degree - was an option taken by fewer and fewer men. In contrast, for those women with the inclination and financial means, Part II provided the opportunity to concentrate on the non-linguistic aspects of classics, especially after the abolition of the compulsory Section A in 1895. 20.1% of women who had taken Part I in 1905-14 also took Part II, compared with only 10.9% of those who had taken Part I in 1885-94. After 1895 it was women who exploited the potential of Part II more fully: between 1895 and 1914, 21.6% of women went on to take Part II compared with only 8.1% of men. The structure of Part II not only gave women freedom to specialise, it also often allowed them to improve their examination results. The profile of Part I results for 93 Pym IV 464. 94 Ibid 95 Pym V 533.

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Table 5: The number of candidates who took Parts I and II of the Classical Tripos, and the percentage of those taking Part I who went on to take Part II No. taking Part I

No. taking Part II

1885-1894 1895-1904 1905-1914

80 66 73

8 13 17

10 19.7 23.3

1885-1914

219

38

17.6

1885-1894 1895-1904 1905-1914

49 71 86

6 19 15

12.2 26.8 17.4

1885-1914

206

40

19.4

1885-1894 1895-1904 1905-1914

129 137 159

14 32 32

10.9 23.4 20.1

1885-1914

425

78

18.4

1885-1894 1895-1904 1905-1914

1061 1135 1000

158 101 73

14.9 8.9 7.3

1885-1914

3196

332

10.4

Date

% taking Part II

Girton

Newnham

All women

All men

Note. All dates in this Table refer to the year in which the candidates took Part I.

women who took Part II was very different from that for men. As Table 6 shows, it remained common for women taking Part II to have got Seconds or Thirds in Part I. Between 1885 and 1914, less than 40% of women taking Part II had got a First in Part I - although the proportion increased over time - whereas over 80% of men had done so. Table 7, which compares directly the Part II results of men and women, shows that 58.1% of men got Firsts in Part II compared with 50% of women. However, the extent to which women could achieve success in Part II is revealed fully in Table 8. 66% of men taking Part II stayed in the same class that they had achieved in Part I, in

69

W OM EN AND THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS 1869-1914

Table 6: Part I results of candidates who went on to take Part II D a te

C la s s I ( % )

C la s s II ( % )

C la s s I I I ( % )

T o ta l

Women 1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

4 ( 2 8 .6 )

8 ( 5 7 .1 )

2 ( 1 4 .3 )

14

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

11 ( 3 4 .4 )

14 ( 4 3 .8 )

7 ( 2 1 .9 )

32

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

1 6 (5 0 )

1 2 ( 3 7 .5 )

4 ( 1 2 .5 )

32

1885-1914

31 (39.7)

34 (43.6)

13 (16.7)

78

Men 1 8 8 5 -1 8 9 4

1 2 4 ( 7 8 .5 )

3 4 ( 2 1 .5 )

1 8 9 5 -1 9 0 4

8 9 ( 8 8 .1 )

9 ( 8 .9 )

1 9 0 5 -1 9 1 4

5 9 ( 8 0 .8 )

11 ( 1 5 .1 )

3 ( 4 .1 )

73

1885-1914

272 (81.9)

54 (16.3)

6(1.8)

332

0

1 58

3 (3 )

101

Table 7: Part II results of candidates who took Part I in 1885-1914 C la s s I ( % )

Women Men

C la s s II

(%)

C la s s I I I ( % )

T o ta l

39 (5 0 )

3 3 ( 4 2 .3 )

6 ( 7 .7 )

78

1 9 3 ( 5 8 .1 )

1 1 6 ( 3 4 .9 )

2 3 ( 6 .9 )

332

Table 8: Changes in results achieved between Part I and Part II in 1885-1914 C a n d id a te s g o in g

C a n d id a te s

up o n e o r m o re

r e m a i n i n g in th e

c la s s e s ( % )

s a m e c la s s

C a n d id a te s

(%)

g o in g d o w n o n e o r m o r e c la s s e s ( % )

Girton

1 0 ( 2 6 .3 )

22 (5 7 .9 )

6 ( 1 5 .8 )

Newnham

15 ( 3 7 .5 )

21 ( 5 2 .5 )

4 (1 0 )

All women

2 5 ( 3 2 .1 )

4 3 ( 5 5 .1 )

1 0 ( 1 2 .8 )

All men

1 4 ( 4 .2 )

2 1 9 (6 6 )

9 9 ( 2 9 .8 )

70

CLAIRE BREAY

1885-1914, normally the first class. Not surprisingly, few got a higher class in Part II because so many had got Firsts in Part I, but nearly 30% of men fell to a lower class in Part II. Only 12.8% of women dropped down the class-list in Part II, but 16.7% of women taking Part II had already got Thirds in Part I between 1885 and 1914. More significantly, 25 of the 78 women (32.1%) who took Part II after taking Part I in 1885-1914 improved their class. Women who took Part II found that this examination gave them more scope to fulfil their potential; few of the majority who took only Part I did themselves justice because of the combined effect of their schooling and the nature of the examination. The women who exploited Part II had discovered how to succeed within the existing, male-created system. In the early twentieth century, however, female success took on a new dimension; women’s participation in the Tripos ceased to be restricted to female examination candidates. In 1902, Jane Harrison published her Prolegomena to the study o f Greek religion: in 1903 five questions in the Part II, Section D paper on mythology and religion were drawn directly from her book.96 Harrison was the first woman to have such an impact on the Tripos. Although this influence was restricted to one Part II paper, it marked the female appropriation of an element of the Tripos. Women, marginalised by a male university, began to have power within the Tripos in the marginalised field of archaeology. Part I, though, continued to be controlled by men and to be dominated by the examination of men’s linguistic skills.

96 Stewart (1959) 54.

V

NOTHING BUT GIBBERISH AND SHIBBOLETHS?: THE COMPULSORY GREEK DEBATES, 1870-19191

Judith Raphaely The headlines in The Times of 6 March 1905 gave readers news of the war in Manchuria, of Mr Roosevelt’s presidential inauguration, of Stock Exchange activity, and of the byelection defeat of the Scottish Solicitor-General by Mr Norman Lamont (Labour).2 Above all this, however, came the most important domestic headline of the day - at least as far as The Times and its readers were concerned: ‘Greek at Cambridge University. The polling of graduates of Cambridge University on the question as to whether Greek is to remain a compulsory subject... was brought to a close on Saturday evening ... The proposals [for abolition] were rejected ...’. This illustrates well the importance of considering the Compulsory Greek debates in context, especially when that context is such a dramatic one. T he Question’ of Compulsory Greek was first raised in 1870 and only resolved in 1919 - half a century of extraordinary change in British society. Over that period, a series of debates over whether some Greek should remain a practical requirement for anyone seeking admission created one of the most bitter controversies ever faced by the University. The Times

1 A longer version of this paper was initially written for Part II of the Classical Tripos, 1994; for their help towards that dissertation I should like to thank Dr M. Beard and Dr G. Sutherland; Dr E. Leedham -G reen and the staff of the University Library, Cambridge; Professor P. Easterling and Dr C. Stray. I am particularly grateful to Professor Easterling, Dr Stray, Dr P. M illett and Ms J. Lewis for their help in reading drafts of the paper given at the Philological Society Sem inar on 25 May 1996 and their extremely useful comments. My thanks also to Miss A. Burrows without whose generous support, and infectious enthusiasm for education and for the nineteenth century, I should never have written this paper. For my title, see note 53 below. W here no source is given, footnotes refer to flysheets/papers. These have survived arbitrarily. M ost of the references are to Cam bridge Papers, ER101; those with dates marked ‘F ’ are in ‘Papers relating to the Greek question’ (October 1891) in the Cam brige Classical Faculty Library (E13.4.10). Those m arked ‘J ’ are from the num bered collection, ‘The Greek question’, presented to Jackson in May 1905 (Cam .b.905.20, University Library, Cambridge). O ther sources in the University Library include: Minute Book of the Council of the Senate, vol. XI, 1891 (University Archives, Min. I 2^42); Proposals for the Institution of a Previous Exam ination, Cambridge Pam phlets Folio Series, vol. IV (Cam .a.500.528); U niversity Papers 60, box 2 ,5 1 2 -5 3 ; Cambridge University Classical Exam inations, 1866-81 (L 952.b.27). 2 Times, 6 March 1905, 9f.

72

JUDITH RAPHAELY

0 H n P Q T E K T E A 4>HMAAE.

Figure 14. The protected female. A cartoon from P unch, 7 Novem ber 1891, 218.

THE COM PULSORY GREEK DEBATES

73

reported the climax of several months’ debate, in the round preceding that of 1905, as follows: From an early hour this morning, it was evident from the large influx of non­ resident members of the Senate that the vote ... would be a very large one. Some stirring scenes have been enacted in the Senate-House, but no proposal made by the Council of Senate has ever before excited such intense interest. The strenuous efforts made on both sides to secure support for and against the two graces [brought] together in the Senate-House the largest number of members of the Senate ever gathered within its walls. The floor ... was almost completely filled ... the voters passed the [specially placed] barriers in detachments ... For some time it seemed to those on the dais that the division would be a close one, but after the placets had been counted the number of non-placets was apparently not half exhausted ... when the Senior Proctor announced the numbers - placet, 185; non-placet 525 - hearty cheers were raised. The decisive majority was hardly expected. The fact that 710 members of the Senate recorded their votes shows the great interest taken in the question, and it will probably be many years before it will again be raised. The other business at the Congregation ... rapidly disposed of ... the assembly dispersed, the supporters of the graces acknowledging that the enormous majority was quite beyond their anticipation.3 Not central to our mythology of the period, indeed never subjected to systematic study,4 these debates raged not only within the University and narrow educational world but also in wider circles. For this immensely complex controversy incorporated many problematic tensions, and one reason it took so long to resolve was that there was no one single question of Compulsory Greek; much more was at stake than ‘simply’ the question of whether Greek should remain a compulsory subject within the University. The battleground kept shifting, between but also within each round of debates and each supposed group of antagonists. To an extent this was tactical, and sometimes perceived as such, but there were always complementary, and often conflicting, agendas involved. The abolition of Compulsory Greek was so bound up with a web of contemporary issues that the shifting of the debates’ parameters was inevitable. The centrality of ancient Greece to Victorian high culture is well known. Those on every side of the controversy shared an education rooted in and shaped by the classics, and thus it could never be as simple as a battle between ‘classicists’ and ‘non-clas­ sicists’. Rather, ‘Compulsory Greek’ became an arena in which to debate other issues, both of narrowly Cantabrigian interest and intrinsic to the wider context of a period of enormous change in British society, from the external impetus precipitating the debates 3 4

Times, 30 October 1891, 9. Not m entioned in Brooke (1993); W instanley (1947) 163-71, 178-80 stops at 1880; Rothblatt (1968) 252-4 omits, for exam ple, the 1891 debate. Johnson (1994) considers the 1903-1905 round, but again does not cover the whole period.

74

JU DITH RAPHAELY

in 1870 to their resolution the month that the peace conference met at Versailles. At stake were questions concerning the role of a university and its position relative to schools (which over this period became an ever more diverse category), to other universities (which went from meaning Oxford to meaning an array of new institutions) and to the Church (religion itself looming large at times). The merits and objectives of a classical education merged with discussion of the objectives of education per se, particularly in the comparison with the status of various ‘modem’ alternatives, and through the everwidening idea of who should be educated. The sum of such questions remained the central debate - what and to whom were Cambridge’s responsibilities. In the nineteenth century this was complicated further because there was not our perception of Cambridge as a discrete, independent institution. The Great War accelerated and compounded changes in society over this half century and abolition in 1919 reflected a new view of the definition and relations of liberalism, nationalism, utilitarianism and education. The modern ‘intensive Latin’ debates in Cambridge offer a useful point of reference. While ‘the Question’ has been whether A-Level Latin should remain a requirement for anyone wishing to read classics, we are all aware that this is a simplification of the many issues debated over years. Faculties have had to consider and re-examine not only their own objectives, and how they define and are prepared pragmatically to redefine the study of classics (in terms both of the levels attained and the areas covered), but also those of other universities, and in particular of schools. It has been especially difficult to balance the desire to recruit from a wider range of schools against the threat which removing the A-Level requirement would pose to school Latin, under everincreasing pressure from new subjects in the curriculum, and the issue is rarely discussed independently of emotional speculation on the potential demise of the subject in schools. Such reform is always based on speculation, potential and threats. The image of a fight for survival of an otherwise moribund cause is crucial, but no one can know whether the ‘image’ is a false one or the likely prognosis for the cause. Again, part of the debate has centred on the question, for what and to whom are the universities responsible? The chronology of ‘The Greek Question’ at Cambridge is complex, and an outline framework necessary.5 No subject was technically prerequisite for entrance to Victorian Cambridge. The Previous Examination or Little-Go, on which I shall concentrate, was taken after entering residence but a candidate had to perform satisfactorily before proceeding to further examinations: Greek was here compulsory (see Table 1). In 1870 Lord Lyttelton (Chief Endowed Schools Commissioner) wrote to universities emphasising both the Commission’s decision to recognise the claims of non-classical studies by establishing schools which did not teach Greek, and the disad­ vantages of such schools being cut off from the universities. At Cambridge, this 5

Com piled mainly from multiple entries in CUR and flysheets.

THE COMPULSORY GREEK DEBATES

75

Table 1 Simplified structure of Cambridge examinations during Compulsory Greek debates

Ordinary BA Degree (Poll/without Honour)

BA Degree with Honours

Special Examination

Tripos (Honours) Examination

Wide subject options, including French/German from 1880s

Until 1850s, only Mathematics and Classics. Later 19th century: new Triposes included Moral Sciences, Natural Sciences, Law, History, Modern Languages By 1918, 13 Triposes

General (Ordinary) Examination Established 1860s, but increasingly redundant as could be replaced by 2 Specials. Included History & English as well as Classics/Mathematics

POLL (PASS) MEN

HONOURS MEN

Previous (Little-Go) Examination (Students must pass satisfactorily before proceeding to further examinations) Tested Greek, Latin, Mathematics and Paley’s Evidences o f Christianity (Honours men took some further Additional Subjects)

Undergraduates Start Here prompted the appointment of a syndicate, whose proposals to offer limited exemption from Compulsory Greek were rejected (51:48). A different syndicate with a wider brief first reported in 1872, when the Senate in a straw vote accepted the principle of alternatives to Greek for Honours candidates only (but not for all candidates) but then rejected the final report, which incorporated this principle but was not signed by all the syndics (90:81).

76

JUDITH RAPHAELY

In 1878 a memorial from leading headmasters and other public figures advocated exemption for Honours candidates (Table 2, below). A syndicate was established to consider this and endorsed the proposal, but again, some syndics withheld and in 1880 the scheme was rejected (185:145). In 1891, at least partially on a University initiative, the Council of the Senate proposed a grace to appoint a syndicate to consider the alternatives to Previous Greek but took the unusual step of announcing a discussion before it was put to the Senate. The controversy - about the issues the syndicate would discuss at least as much as the appointment itself - spiralled, with opinion in the country mobilised by special committees through an extraordinary collection of flysheets, the press and various prominent names. In a remarkable vote the grace was rejected - it is this refusal even to reconsider The Greek question’ officially which is described in the above excerpt from The Times.6 A vestigial proposal for a syndicate dealing with the question of separate degrees in science (which would almost certainly be exempt from Greek) was also rejected (185:145). In 1903 a syndicate to consider Compulsory Greek was appointed with a compre­ hensive brief, although widely non-placeted. Officially this followed an unpublished letter from the Chancellor to the Vice-Chancellor, circulated confidentially to certain resident University members. Records survive, however, of a secret meeting of key anti-abolitionists three months before this letter was even written, which suggests that the question was in the air, or at least that the defence had been well prepared. Now the controversy, simultaneously raised at Oxford, ran to unprecedented levels in the circulars, articles, letters to the Press and lists of supporters published almost daily in the run-up to the vote. The report, not signed by all the syndics, included alternatives to Greek for all candidates and drew the largest poll there had ever been in the Senate. An evocative description of the occasion, from the undergraduates pulling voters along the railway platforms to the extraordinary arrangements for the voting, begins ‘They cheered as our train arrived from London. They cheered as we poured out of the carriages - clergymen, barristers, doctors, journalists, members of Parliament, school­ masters .. .’.7Compulsory Greek won a landslide majority (1559:1052). The syndicate, augmented by some of its staunchest opponents, was (narrowly) voted to continue, but its second report, concentrating on the General but including limited exemption in the Previous, was rejected (746:241). In 1913 a syndicate was appointed for wide-ranging investigations into exami­ nations. It reported, including alternatives for Previous Greek for all candidates, three weeks before Sarajevo. In the subsequent discussions, attention focused on other parts of the report and abolition seems taken as read. Cambridge’s legislative activity was largely suspended from 1914 and, despite a flurry of memorials in 1917, the Council refused to proceed until after the war. In 1919 Compulsory Greek was abolished (161:15): the division speaks for itself. 6 7

See n. 3. The M anchester Guardian 6 March 1905, 5.

THE COMPULSORY GREEK DEBATES

77

The involvement of so many leading public figures, and the massive press coverage, show that the Compulsory Greek debates were about much more than a narrowly Cambridge issue. This is the story of a power struggle over who should determine the agenda for education and of a remarkable failure to understand the unfamiliar. Compulsory Greek questioned much that was fundamental to the late Victorians and Edwardians, and in a context of great change, Cambridge had to establish its relations with other institutions, and its own place in a society whose changes, at the end of the Greek debates, were accelerated and compounded by the War. Although their inter­ connection makes discussion of discrete aspects both crude and difficult, I will look first at some of the institutional problems pervading the debates (over schools, rival universities and the Church), and then at some key themes of educational reform. In the final section, I will consider how these were all integral not merely to whether Cambridge should continue to examine some Greek in the Previous but to the whole University and its place in a wider context.

Schools In days of old, when Greek to Greek was true, Triumphant Greece barbaric hosts o’erthrew, But, when Greek hosts had learnt to praise the foe, See, prostrate Athens feels the secret blow. Greek and barbarian! Glorious the fray! The combat open! - but beware the day, When Attic accents smoothly counsel peace And plead for Philip in their zeal for Greece.8 As the juxtaposition in The Times of the Greek issue and other news headlines illustrates, in the nineteenth century there was not our division between educational and other institutions. One large charmed circle incorporated the leading and many lesser public schools and the two ancient universities; tangential to this circle were the Church, the aristocracy, the monarchy, the services, government. These inextricably bound parts comprised the established order. Their links could be exemplified by almost any character in Cambridge during the period of the Greek debates: two examples must here suffice. Henry Montagu Butler, a leading abolitionist, was successively a parliamentary secretary, headmaster of Harrow, Dean of Gloucester (also chaplain to Queen Victoria and George V) and Master of Trinity. Richard Jebb, a staunch retentionist, was during his term as Regius Professor of Greek elected four times as MP for the University. In an excellent illustration of the complexity of ranging the 8

26 October 1891 (T E P[age]); only one exam ple of repeated participation in the Greek debates by this em inent editor and Charterhouse schoolmaster (failure to gain a headship has been ascribed to his refusal to take holy orders).

78

JU DITH RAPHAELY

controversialists, both men signed the 1878 memorial (Table 2), a document which highlights the degree of implication between the different realms of late Victorian élite life; signatories included leading headmasters, academics, politicians and prelates.

Table 2 The 1878 memorial requesting alternatives to Greek for Honours men P E M B R O K E C O L L E G E L O D G E . D ece m b er 3, 1878. T he fo llo w in g M em o rial has been received by the V ice-C hancellor, and is p ublished by him for the in fo rm atio n o f the S enate: T o t h e R e v e r e n d t h e V ic e -C h a n c e l l o r , a n d t h e C o u n c il o f t h e S e n a t e , o f t h e U n iv e r s it y o f C a m b r id g e .

We, the undersigned, C o n sid erin g the fact th at the p resent regulation, according to w hich a know ledge o f G reek is required from all C an d id ates fo r the P revious E xam ination at C am brid ge, has the effect o f excluding a large and in creasin g n u m b er o f able and d eserving students from the benefits o f a U niversity E ducation, R esp ectfu lly pray that the A uthorities o f the U niversity w ill be p leased to take into co nsideration som e m eans w h ereb y C an d idates for an H onour D egree m ay be relieved from the obligation o f passing an E x am in atio n in G reek. J. J .H o r n b y , E to n C o lle g e . G. R id d in g , W in ch ester C ollege. C. B. S c o t t , W estm in ster C ollege. F. W . W a l k e r , St P a u l’s School. H. M . B u t l e r , H arrow School. T. W . J e x B l a k e , R u g by School. ABERDARE.a M a t th e w A r n o l d .b T. C a r l y l e . F r e d e r ic k C a v e n d ish .c

B. M. C ow iE.d C . D a r w in . J. L l ew e ly n D a v ie s .e F. E x o n .f F . W . F a r r a r .g

E. M . Y o u n g , S herborne School. E . A . A b b o t t , C ity o f L ondon School. H. W . E v e , U niversity C ollege School. S. D il l , M an ch ester G ram m ar School. A . S. W il k in s , O w ens C ollege.

W . E. F o r s t e r .h . E. G ra n t D u f f . J. L . H a m m o n d .' J. D . H o c k e r J H oughton. L a w rence. T. H . H u x l e y .k R . C . J eb b J. M a n c h e s t e r

J o seph B . M a y o r .1 H . J. R o b y .m A . P. S t a n l e y .n W . S po t t isw o o d e .0 W . H. S t o n e . G. O . T r e v e l y a n .p J. T y n d a l l .q C. J. V a u g h a n .r H. W . W a t s o n .

Key to table 2 a b c d e f g h 1

form er H om e Secretary, Lord President o f Council. poet, critic, School Inspector. leading Liberal MP. lecturer and D ean of M anchester. lecturer, deacon, G reek translator bishop, form er headm aster o f Rugby, clergym an, w riter, form er headm aster of M arlborough, Chaplain to Q ueen Victoria. form er Education Secretary. b arrister, F ellow , S chools Inquiry C om m issioner, g o v ern o r o f W e stm in ste r, secretary to D uke o f D evonshire, author of Carmen latinum Cantabrigiense.

j k 1 m n ° P P r

em inent botanist. biologist. Fellow , cleric, headm aster, Professor o f C lassics at K ing’s College London. P ro fe s s o r o f J u r is p r u d e n c e , E n d o w e d S c h o o ls C om m issioner, Latin scholar. Fellow, Dean, Professor o f Ecclesiastical H istory at Oxford. em inent m athem atician. form er Lord o f A dm iralty, historian. physicist. preacher.

THE COMPULSORY GREEK DEBATES

79

In some ways, the evolution of the Compulsory Greek controversy can be seen as part of the progress from this (simplistic) nineteenth-century model of Privilege - to which Oxbridge was integral - versus The Uneducated, towards a (similarly simplistic) twentieth-century division between schools and universities, incorporating a far broader spectrum of both. The predominance of leading public schoolmasters in the 1878 memorial is typical of the Greek debates. Butler had signed the memorial as headmaster of Harrow, one of the nine schools investigated by the Clarendon Commission.9 The close Victorian ties between Cambridge and the top schools are well known - the report of the 1904 Greek syndicate shows that in 1902-1904 out of 334 institutions sending students to Cambridge, these nine supplied more than 20 per cent.10But the expansion of education at elementary and secondary levels was a stark fact of which Cambridge began to feel it must take notice, and which had an important influence on the Greek debates. The Endowed Schools Commission had decided to recognise non-classical studies by establishing ‘modern’ schools, teaching modern languages and natural sciences in the place of Greek. This challenged the established principle that the universities set the school curriculum; who dictated what should be studied was a crucial issue in the Greek debates. The spread of these modern schools, and the consequent development of ‘modern sides’ in traditional schools, encouraged a wider outlook at Cambridge. It was the disadvantages of modern schools being cut off from the universities which Lord Lyttelton emphasised in his letter which prompted the appointment of the first ‘Greek syndicate’ in 1870.11 As the schools grew in number and strength over the next five decades, the University came to realise that it must cultivate a range of relations wider than ever before. To recruit from anything other than a swiftly decreasing minimum, the University must abandon its Compulsory Greek requirement. It was not altruistic concern for less traditional schools which prompted Butler and five other Clarendon Heads to sign the 1878 memorial; they acted also in self-interest. This was seen particularly in the proposals for ‘partial abolition’ (for Honours men only, or later for scientists only). Such compromises would bolster the prestige of modem alternatives, but retain the need to offer some Greek where resources allowed - clearly an ideal position for rich public schools! At each round of the controversy, there was great emphasis on gathering information from schoolmasters. But it is striking that the opinions of those schools which did not wish to have to continue to teach Greek, or which already did not do so, were seldom directly heard. The evidence was predom­ inantly from schools which sent boys to Cambridge already, particularly from those which sent most boys and were most closely connected with Cambridge. Lor example, in 1891 there was great debate over what proportion of boys represented by the Headmasters’ Conference learnt Greek, but nobody seems to have questioned how 9

The Clarendon Com m ission on leading public schools (Eton, W inchester, W estminster, Charterhouse, St P aul’s, M erchant T aylor’s, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury); appointed in 1861, reported in 1864. 10 From data in CUR, 11 N ovem ber 1904, 2 2 Iff. 11 3 June 1870 (Lyttelton); published in CU R, 9 Novem ber 1870, 75.

80

JU DITH RAPHAELY

representative were the seventy or eighty schools which comprised the HMC.12 By 1904 it was clear that the less traditional organisations had very different attitudes towards Compulsory Greek. The report showed only eight out of fifty-five responding HMC members in favour of abolition, whereas the newer Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters had passed a resolution supporting abolition.13One key question was whether it was for Cambridge to maintain Greek in schools. But this was continually obscured by speculation over the damage which removing the compulsory requirement might do to school Greek. Where so much of the ‘evidence’ was anecdotal, there remained inevitable disagreement on facts, especially over the spread and success of modern studies. From the start, Lyttelton and others maintained that many clever boys from less traditional schools were excluded from the University by their lack of Greek. But details remained vague; even in the introduction to 47 pages of evidence, the 1880 report could only say that ‘the existing obligation ... excludes from the University a number of able and industrious students’.14Clearly such lack of precision could be used both ways, and even in 1904 a speaker maintained that the Senate ‘knew perfectly well that no single man was kept out whose intelligence reached the ordinary level of humanity’.15 This all made it hard to substantiate the veiled threat which the Endowed Schools Commission, and Lyttelton’s letter, had posed to Cambridge. Retentionists maintained throughout that the Universities set the course of studies, and could not accept dictation from schoolmasters, much less from utilitarian parents, ignorant of educational values. But the growth of the newly-emergent large, rich, mercantile and manufacturing centres forced consideration of their association - or otherwise - with the University, as part of the debate about Cambridge’s relations with different strata of English society. The background of such parents did not include Cambridge or Greek; they were, the Cambridge Review quipped in 1880, ‘not peculiarly struck with the great benefit of that je ne sais quoi of gentlemanly bearing which is popularly connected with the knowledge of declensions and participles’.16But some reformers felt that their opinions were a genuine indication of national interest and should be taken on board. By 1904 Eton and Winchester parents were objecting to Compulsory Greek, which clearly put pressure on even the most traditional schools to develop modern sides. Perhaps what made this pressure most felt in Cambridge was a second institution, the increasing range of rival universities.

12 CUR, 9 June 1891, 953, 956; F 26 October 1891; F27/10/1891; F28 October 1891 (Swete and Bateson); F28 October 1891 (Sidgwick); F (undated, Sidgwick). Sim ilar statistical squabbles surrounded the 1904 Syndicate’s evidence from the HM C (Reporter, 11 N ovem ber 1904, 207) and the attending pam phlet by one of the withholding Syndics (J54, 12 Novem ber 1904). 13 CUR, 11 Novem ber 1904, 205ff., at 207 and 216. 14 CUR, 9 April 1880,414. 15 CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 392. 16 CambR, 17 Novem ber 1880, 84. On the relative notions of gentility, education and professionalism , see especially Clark (1962) 255-64; Gillespie (1950); Engel (1983) 11-12; Rothblatt (1968) 90-1.

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Other universities Afar from here I see them fly Where none may learn his verbs in They get degrees in making jam At Liverpool and Birmingham!17

¡1 1

It was not correct... that except through Greek there was no intellectual salvation. The position of the newly-established Universities was extremely strong ... they possessed large endowments and ... excellent teachers, many ... drawn from Cambridge.18 A few decades earlier, the only options had been Greek or no higher education. But the period of these debates saw the mushrooming of modern establishments, which looked towards more modern studies. By 1891 some new universities had decided to require one classical language only, and the Greek syndicate’s report in 1904 compared six universities, of which Oxbridge alone required both Latin and Greek.19 One response to these new rivals was to emphasise the superiority of Oxbridge, and Compulsory Greek was an obvious way to differentiate. When the renowned reformer Henry Sidgwick pointed to the decisions of the Victoria University of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the Scottish University Commission to require one classical language only,20 a retort sniffed that ‘University Education is a term that bears a somewhat different meaning when applied to Education at [those places] and when applied to education at Oxford or at Cambridge’.21 Even in 1904, ‘Greek was the badge of good work and good influence ... Oxford and Cambridge ought to have some subject which distinguished them from other universities and which served as a badge for all the better class of boys - the most educatable boys so to say .. .’.22 Of course, relations with Oxford were also complex, and moving alone might jeopardise Cambridge’s prestige; one retentionist committee warned ‘. .. from Oxford, not from Cambridge, will proceed in future the administrators of the Empire’.23 In 1903 the threat from the new universities underlay the Chancellor’s letter,24 in which the immediate issue was ‘the financial needs of the University’, particularly grave following the disappointing response to a recent appeal. That new universities 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Godley (1926) 1 265. Times , 5 December 1904, 6. CUR, 11 N ovem ber 1904, 198ff. 19 October 1891. F 27 October 1891. CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 362. 27 February 1905. Chancellor to Vice-Chancellor, circulated confidentially to ‘some representative men from C am bridge’, 4 June 1903; report of private discussion, 13 June 1903. Although the letter remained, controversially, unpublished ( ‘not the constitutional m ethod of the U niversity of Cam bridge [but] the principle of the Roman E m pire’, CUR, 17 December 1904, 388). there was wide speculation as to its general content.

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were receiving great endowments ‘afford[s] the strongest evidence of an intense desire on the part of the nation for university training’. Retaining Compulsory Greek was not the way to answer such a desire. ‘In the long run the old Universities must respond to national wants or they will dwindle and become insignificant.’ ‘National wants’ now meant more than traditional élite desires, and the Chancellor neatly encapsulated the tension. ‘The opinions of great capitalists and commercial men are of importance, however remote may be their relationship to that pure knowledge which it is the function of a University to foster.’ The private meeting to discuss this letter heard examples of boys, as well as benefactors, lost through the continued alienation of this new wealthy class. Retentionists argued that Cambridge could not be dictated to by millionaires, and needed, more than ever, to retain its traditional distinction. Professor Ridgeway felt that Cambridge would have its connection with the middle classes, who would ‘for social reasons’ send their own sons to Oxbridge. But they would, he said, continue to give their money to the industrial centres where they had made it, and Cambridge must continue to rely for endowments on the network of old boys and their relatives - ‘her old clientèle’.25 Cambridge ‘could not compete with Birmingham. Would the Corporation of Cambridge ... give them £250,000 to set up brewing and metallurgy? They would be beaten completely in that sort of thing by the great centres of commerce.’26 The growing number of rival institutions exacerbated a paradox emerging over this period. The spread of education outside its traditional constituency had gained some concession from Cambridge in the form of exemption from the Previous for specific groups. Particularly after the turn of the century, the lists of such groups in the Students’ Handbooks grow strikingly with each edition. The increasing numbers who had taken the innovative School Leaving Certificates had done some Greek, but those who may not have included students of non-European parentage, certain Indian students and students with a degree already from a rapidly growing list of affiliated colleges, universities or centres of local lectures. A 1905 flysheet asked ‘What is the sense or consistency of opening a fairly wide back door to some Greek-less students, and closing the front door to others of similar capacity but less favoured by local circumstances?’27 and in 1913 the syndicate’s brief specifically included consideration of the ‘mutual relations’ of the Previous and certain quasi-external examinations.28 One of the War’s most practical impacts on the Compulsory Greek debates was that men who had done service or war-related activities were allowed the Previous. When peace came, it brought a massive increase in student numbers which would impossibly increase the number of such contradictions in the system. Pragmatically, Cambridge needed to offer some alternative to Compulsory Greek. 25 26 27 28

Chancellor’s meeting, ibid. CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 370. 1 March 1905. CUR, 13 May 1913, 1044.

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The Church (The Prime Minister [Arthur Balfour, Conservative] visited Cambridge on Saturday to record his vote for the abolition of Compulsory Greek) It was a Doubty Premier, To Cambridge he did go; Where men of ‘Stynx’ had made a match ’Twixt him and ὁ, ἡ, τό . A Little Goes a longish way When driven straight and true; And ARTHUR’S ball fa’s on the green, And makes the hole in two. But in the rest of this great round (A wondrous tale we tell) His ball was bunkered hard and fast At every place it fell. For fifteen hundred parsons bold, Hidden about the links, Made living bunkers of themselves To stem the tide of Stynx. And so we bless the gallant band That played for ὁ, ἡ, τό; For, though our Greek be little, we’ll Not let that Little Go.29 A third institution whose relationship with Cambridge was crucial in the Greek debates was the Church, and religion entered the debates at several levels. Special connection with the Church was fundamental to the tradition of the ancient universities, and especially of Cambridge, and to their distinction from newer institutions such as ‘that godless college in Gower Street’. The nineteenth century saw the start of progress t o w a r d s s e c u l a r i s a t i o n in B r it a i n a n d t h e e r o s i o n of t h e e s t a b l i s h m e n t of t h e C h u r c h as a bastion of the status quo. In 1871 the Universities Tests Act had theoretically opened all Oxbridge posts to non-Anglicans, and the diminishing control of Anglicanism and the dissolving of the exclusive link between university staff and clergy was a hallmark of this period in Oxbridge.30 29 Punch, 15 March 1905, 185. 30 See especially Engel (1983), Harvie (1976), Rothblatt (1968).

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Greek was widely seen as important in Cambridge’s traditional connection with the Church; an 1891 flysheet proclaimed: ‘It was when Greek came in at Cambridge to rank alongside of Latin that Cambridge rose to exercise an even greater influence than Oxford upon the progress of mankind, and that the Church of England shook herself free from her incumbrances . . . \ 31 Whether all good Christians needed to be able to read the New Testament in the original might be open to debate, but that all clergy must do so was taken for granted. Again, the discussion of who should be Cambridge’s responsibility was important here. Abolitionists argued that all boys could not be compelled to take Greek because some might afterwards choose holy orders, especially when the expansion of professions made that choice less likely.32 But there was great concern about the impact abolition of Compulsory Greek would have on the national religion. If Greek did dwindle in schools, boys would have to decide on a vocation at an early age, or not have the choice at all, leaving Greek and its Scriptures a minority interest only. The clergy were very prominent in all the debates. Even in 1905 clergymen accounted for 39% of those voting and 57% of those voting against abolition - only 13% of voting clergy supported abolition, compared to 58% of voting laymen.33 Once again the question returns: by whom Cambridge should allow policy to be dictated? When the expertise in education of parents was held to be negligible, and that of school­ masters dubious, there was clear resentment against the hold the clergy continued to exercise. Placards at the 1905 vote read: ‘The Prime Minister votes placet, what does it matter how the Rector and the curates vote?’; ‘Why should the University be ruled from the country parishes?’; ‘Let the clergy rule our lives but not our learning’.34 Having looked at some of the institutional issues underlying the Compulsory Greek debates, in Cambridge’s relations with schools, with other universities, and with the Church, it is important to outline more general questions; the modem alternatives to Greek study and two contemporary themes of educational reform, thoroughness and choice.

Modern studies Are we not yearning after a hundred years ago, when the educated class was really possessed of classical culture, when men were saturated with it and had their daily conversations in it ... to be wistfully regretted if you please but now as dead as Queen Anne.35

31 32 33 34 35

F 27 October 1891. E.g. 28 February 1905. On the impact of expanding professions, Engel (1983) 8. From statistics in The Times, 4 November 1905, 6. The M anchester Guardian, 6 March 1905, 5. Times, 4 January 1905, 6.

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Lyttelton wrote in 1870 that the debates should already have moved past the relative merits of Greek and its modern rivals; that not only the middle classes but also competent judges wanted alternatives was reason enough to offer them.36 Like several aspects of the controversy - and indeed of later Victorian life - the relative status of Greek and its possible alternatives was in the years following 1870 undergoing a transition which tended towards abolition but which was accelerated and determined by the impact of war.37 This section mentions some very brief points about the main subjects which came to challenge Greek - modern languages and science. Traditionally, the more immediately ‘useful’ a study, the less its perceived academic value.38 Modern studies, increasingly useful in commerce and industry, were seen as shallow and utilitarian, and impassioned rhetoric defending Cambridge against the encroachment of modern studies pervaded the debates. To give just one example from the many available, the headmaster of Rugby wrote to The Times: There is a danger, deep and imminent, of a surrender of our educational fortress to the utilitarians and the Philistines’.39 Before the war opened new vistas of internationalism, the modern languages under serious discussion were French and German. Great care was taken to counter the ‘soft option’ argument, with the proposals framed in the spirit of wider educational reform. Sidgwick wrote at the start that ‘The students of modern languages have never asked that their test should be reduced to the level of that which guarantees the old-fashioned product of the classical system’.40 Although the fear persisted that modern studies were a refuge for the incapable and encouraged less clever candidates, the counter-argument ran that the barrier to the universities at least gave undue prominence to the practical aspects of these studies. One correspondent wrote to The Times: ‘From Greek men got lofty thoughts; the study of French or German stood out on too low a plane’,41 and there also remained a lurking, and sometimes explicit, xenophobia.42 But the increasingly international context began to erode such isolationism; whilst urging against the antithesis - ‘Plato had a message as well as Hegel or Spencer’ - the president of the Modern Languages Association called for more modern studies in national life - ‘no nation could live to itself alone’ (Times, 13 January 1905, 8). Even the Clarendon Report in 1864, broadly supportive of the predominance of classics, had denounced exclusion of science from upper-class education as ‘a plain defect and a great practical evil’.43 Notwithstanding either Lyttelton’s emphasis and 36 Lyttelton, 3 June 1870. 37 On dom estic education in this international context, Sutherland (1994). I am grateful to Dr Sutherland for perm ission to refer to this paper. 38 Rothblatt (1968) 256; cf. F 23 October 1891. This view long predom inated, although some supported utility as a valid criterion, e.g. am ended preamble of the syndicate’s report, 9 June 1871. 39 Times, 10 January 1905, 5. 40 Undated, 1872/3. 41 Tim es, 5 D ecember 1904, 6. 42 E.g. Clarendon R eport ( 1864) 2, 127. 43 Jenkins (1986), 156.

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reminder that ‘[for some] Natural Science has a higher claim than any other subject to be the chief instrument of education’, or related contemporary progress in Cambridge such as the opening of the Cavendish Laboratory,44 the relative merits of science were not central to the Compulsory Greek debates. Many assumed that whilst a language could reasonably be substituted for a language, a science for a language was anomalous; conversely, one HMC meeting suggested that if a boy had no linguistic capacity, ‘handicraft or science’ would be a better substitute 45 Cambridge’s relative attachment to mathematics and science was alternately celebrated as a reason for it to take the lead in abolishing Compulsory Greek and deprecated as a reason for perceived inferiority to Oxford, therefore making retention crucial. Science surfaced most controversially in the debates between partial and total abolition in 1903-6. The internecine factions over this issue, as so often during these debates, destroyed any chance of reform. The proponents of partial abolition included the chairman of the syndicate who, in opening the Senate discussion, proposed that ‘the truly conservative course’ was to reject the syndicate’s report and thus allow exemption for students of mathematics and science only.46 Total exemption would prevent reasonable reform at any time in the future and many who thwarted abolition in 1905 claimed to want only modification of the proposals. One of the numerous subsidiary issues highlighted within ‘the Greek question’ was the whole system of decision­ making at Cambridge, and particularly the lack of provision for amendments - the 1891 controversy over whether even to appoint a syndicate showed the reductio ad absurdum of this defect.47 During the war, Cambridge’s primary energies were towards Science, production and training.48 The arms race and technological developments raised the prestige of science and highlighted Britain’s relative backwardness. A flysheet in 1891 urged that ‘if England is to maintain her position she must not lag behind in the mental training and in the scientific and practical education of her people’,49 and the Bryce Commission re-iterated the warning of challenges from Britain’s industrial competitors on the continent and elsewhere.50 During the war, one memorial, signed by 170 members of the Senate, stated ‘disappointment that the Council of the Senate, while recording their opinion “that the Question of Compulsory Greek is one of practical urgency at the 44 The retentionist Executive Com m ittee called ‘the growth of [the Science] School ... the most notable feature in the recent history of the U niversity’ (Confidential paper, 12 August 1891). 45 A thenaeum , 31 Decem ber 1904, 905. 46 CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 354. 47 Many disagreed with Butler that ‘Enquiry is not necessarily surrender, still less unconditional and uncom ­ pensated surrender’ (F 21 October 1891).The method of selecting syndics becam e a subsidiary but significant controversy in 1891 and 1903. See, e.g. ‘Stifling enquiry’, F (undated). 48 Times Educational Supplem ent, 31 October 1918, 465. Lobbying for increased awareness of and im portance attached to science education grew during these years through pressure groups, the Press and a com m ittee appointed by the Prime M inister. 49 F 21 October 1891. 50 The Bryce Com m ission (Royal Com m ission on Secondary Education) reported in 1895. For the ubiquity o f such warnings by 1904, CU R, 17 Decem ber 1904, 366.

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Figure 15. Com pulsory Greek; or, Byron up to date. (A British B oy’s view on a Burning Question). P unch, 5 Septem ber 1891,117.

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present time”, have yet decided to take no immediate action ... It is now generally recognised, even by those formerly in favour of compulsion, that, in the altered circumstances of the nation, Greek must be made optional’.51 Jingoism and international competition had given comparison of education systems a new gravity, and the com m ercial rise of Germ any in p articu lar had made patent the widespread lack of knowledge of foreign countries in England. 1914-18 proved the necessity of such knowledge for a democracy’s welfare - it is hard today to recapture the impact a speaker in 1918 would have in warning the Senate that 4it behoved us all to study and watch Germany very carefully’.52 By the time peace came humanism, and liberal education, had been redefined to include new subjects, partly on the basis of their previously scorned utility.

Thoroughness If you had given me a compulsory training in Roman and Greek philosophy, in Greek poetry and Greek literature, as interpreted by English sages, how rich my mind would have become! But [Previous] Greek is nothing to me but gibberish; as to my teachers I see it is nothing more than shibboleths.53 It would be wrong to see these debates as a battle, classicists defending their corner against marauding modern linguists and scientists. All of those involved shared an education rooted in the classics, and few disputed the educational value of Greek. But hindsight and our nostalgia for an idyllic age of classical learning must not obscure the reality of the amount of Greek a candidate needed to satisfy the compulsory 51 CUR, 27 February 1917, 554ff. Council resolved to continue consideration so that action could im m e­ diately follow peace (CUR, 13 March 1917, 606), provoking accusations of ‘a breach of faith ... as if they were G erm ans’ (CUR, 1 M ay 1918, 649). 52 CUR, 1 May 1918, 651. 53 CUR, 17 Decem ber 1904, 364.

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requirement, which normally consisted of a Gospel and one other text as set books.54 Arguments for such a paltry requirement as fundamental either to other studies or to the understanding of religion stretch credibility. The nature of Greek learning for the Previous, and to what extent it could be justified as ‘learning’ was central to the debates. Boys could and did cram for the Previous Greek examinations. Criticism of a limited syllabus offering little insight into Greek civilisation, and of cramming which meant even that was quickly forgotten, fitted into much wider criticism of the Cambridge Poll degree as thoroughness emerged as an important educational objective. Lord Curzon of Kedleston wrote in his Principles and methods o f university reform, published in 1909, ‘the educational value of the test is nil ... a travesty of learning’. This argument against ‘smatterings’ was most notably expounded by Henry Sidgwick. The role of Compulsory Greek was supposedly a linguistic one, and Sidgwick led those who argued that it did not add much to the linguistic training already derived from one classical language.55 Latin too could prosper if examined to a more exacting standard, and many argued for replacing the Greek requirement not with new subjects but with a proper test in Latin. Some saw Compulsory Greek as a waste of time which could better be devoted to an ever wider range of alternatives, but many also argued that Greek’s association with compulsory ‘smatterings ‘ did more harm to the subject than good. Abolition might reduce numbers but, as had happened abroad, Greek would become ‘no longer a matter of shibboleth, but a matter of love and intellectual culture’ and those left would be genuine students.56 F.W. Maitland in 1904 mocked ‘the supposition that the cause of Greek was bound up with this miserable examination ... that the study of Greek after all these centuries of culture, that this beautiful plant was so sickly that it would droop and die unless it was tied to a stick, or a bundle of sticks; that their commerce with the ancients was obviously so unremunerative that it required the protection of a prohibitory tariff ,57 Retentionists felt that if the requirement was so small and so quickly learned, it should not be any problem, and would exclude only the most stupid, and therefore least desirable - such was the nature of preliminary exams, particularly those designed for hoi polloi. They also blamed low standards in schools for the poor level of the Previous, and periodically suggested those as the proper area for reform; this intersected with major contemporary debates about methods of classics teaching, and of traditional pedagogy in general.58 54 Cambridge U niversity Exam ination Papers, University Library, Cambridge. 55 E.g. CUR, 22 May 1872, 317. Contem porary argum ents over which aspects of classics com prised their essential value often entered these debates. The relative merits of unseens and set books were particularly debated in this context, and the late nineteenth-century boom in published translations reflected relevant innovations in approaches to classical study (e.g. CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 364; The M anchester G uardian, 1 M arch 1905, 5). 56 CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 364; J21, undated. 57 CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 373. 58 See especially Stray (1992) on Direct Method.

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But although some maintained that any start in Greek could later be useful, the modern alternatives seemed to offer more, more quickly. Arthur Balfour, Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1891, telegraphed from Dublin: T he humblest acquaintance with science is still science ... An elementary acquaintance with Greek is ... no element in literary culture’.59 Few disputed the value of a Greek education, but there was increasing doubt that this included Compulsory Greek.

Choice [Of the many questions of principle at stake] the broadest distinction ... separates those who wish to make the older Universities the meeting places of genuine students, however widely different their pursuits and aims, and to set up a high and comprehensive ideal of knowledge to the realisation of which all may contribute their share, and those who would ignore the changes that have taken place and would keep education in its old groove, producing a single type of mind which has no sympathy with truth under any aspect except that which is familiar to it.60 As has already been seen, the definition of the objectives of education underwent a fundamental shift during the fifty years of discussion. The threat to civilisation if Greek were to disappear was a concern common to controversialists on all sides. But whilst retentionists brought the discussions back repeatedly to the incomparable intellectual challenges of the Greek language, the centrality of the Greek civilisation to that mark of a civilised man, a liberal education, and the axiomatic place of the language itself in a knowledge and understanding of that civilisation, others felt that this was no longer the ground at issue. With more subjects seen more widely as part of a liberal education, to continue to ignore new developments became illiberal; the responsibility of Cambridge was to the education of its men, and not to Greek, ulterior causes or remote effects. As thoroughness emerged as one educational objective over this period, so did choice. Incorporation of diversity into Cambridge - social and intellectual as well as religious - was at the root of the movement against Compulsory Greek. Greek was traditionally central to a liberal education. But as more subjects became more widely available, it became illiberal to exclude them. The new ideology argued that all subjects should be judged on their merits and not offered false protection. Greek had proved itself capable of survival over the centuries before the introduction of the Previous in 1822, and if current developments - progress or evil utilitarianism - meant that it could not hold its own without the false protection of a paltry requirement, the subject should go. 59 ‘A last word’, F (undated). 60 19 November 1904.

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The Greek debates suggest the emergence of a new starting-point for setting educational agendas, the individual mind rather than a subject indiscriminately imposed, with utilitarianism ‘producing the greatest good ... of which the material offering itself is capable’,61 and the education of the nation meaning the education of its average boys. The indubitably inferior status of modern sides in traditional schools and of modern schools proved that setting up the old and the new as rivals would not work. If the new studies could not be ignored altogether, they needed recognition on equal terms in parallel to the classics, and the future study of Greek itself was dependent on the readjustment of its status in line with new educational ideologies. The clearer trend was against not Greek but compulsion. Some argued for the freedom to enjoy conducive intellectual pursuits as the criterion which should distinguish university from school, but the tendency towards more options in education permeated further down the system. Some passages from the Times Educational Supplement highlight this. In 1918 the Minister of Education, Herbert Fisher, said ‘education is not one of the black arts; its function is not to suppress individuality but to develop it’, and his new Education Act aimed for ‘the greatest possible number of outlets for talent of all descriptions ... the principle of the right of youth’.62 Of course, the War was a major factor here. As seen above, the Chancellor was concerned already in 1903 that Compulsory Greek did not reflect the needs of the nation; after the war, the needs of a greater section of the nation were more widely accepted as important. This greater section included boys for whom Greek was not necessarily the best training, and who were no longer seen as dim, but as different. This trend is most eloquently put in the TES in 1918 by an assistant master attacking the public schools as enforcers of a stereotypical conformity inappropriate to the age: Who are the men who are governing the Empire today in times of stress which have no parallel... upon whom the nation as a whole has pinned its confidence? Not [those] reduced to a pattern at the great boarding schools; and the statesman who stands out as having the noblest vision of all in these great days, President Wilson, is in the country which has no educational organisation at all analogous to our public schools. The days of Wellington and the playing fields of Eton are dead ...63 The impact of this climate on the Greek debates is stark. After the massive coverage of the issue in 1891 and 1905 it is difficult to find any newspaper reference to abolition when it eventually came. The only specific editorial comment is a brief one, as part of an article in the TES entitled ‘Compulsion in Education’.64

61 62 63 64

January 1905 (Walker). Times Educational Supplement, 21 March 1918, 124. Times Educational Supplement, ibid. Times Educational Supplement, 23 January 1919, 43.

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Aspects of the final ‘Greek syndicate’ can highlight the new outlook. Its report adduced evidence not only from headmasters but also from the Board of Education and bodies controlling school leaving and local examinations. The streamlining and system­ atisation of these examinations and their co-ordination with the Previous was a keynote of the report and the ensuing debates. It found that the objective of the Previous was to correspond with varied school curricula and the different aptitudes of different boys. Greek papers (with more choice and higher standards than before) were to be optional against French, German, Italian and Spanish. Compulsory subjects would include Latin, but also English and (after some argument) science.65 The question of Compulsory Greek was by the end of the War so urgent and so clear that a special grace allowed it to be settled in advance of other more controversial areas of reform.66

Breaching the Hindenburg Line Cannot they lift themselves above this little country town, and survey the land they live in, teeming with its eager young minds anxious to come here ... Cannot they drop that pusillanimous little fetish of theirs .. .67 Critical of the universities’ retention of the Greek requirement, the Master of Marlborough College accused them of ‘a policy of trench warfare. They have erected Compulsory Greek into a sort of Hindenburg line on the future of which depend the humanities and most that makes life worth living’68 - chilling words in 1918! What made traditional life worth living, what was being defended by this last bastion, was much wider than ‘the humanities’. The bastion consisted of a syllabus which even from the shrunken position of classics in the 1990s does not look impossibly taxing. What it defended was no less than the old order under radical threat in a rapidly changing society, and Compulsory Greek had been central to that order. As a biographer later wrote of one controversialist, ‘[he] believed in Greek and the House of Lords and the principle of inheritance’.69 Cambridge’s status as an independent institution and its freedom from interference by outsiders at many levels was at the core of the battle; a skit published in 1904 warned of ‘barbarians among us ... a Trojae renascensfortuna’.10 The pressure which came to be more resented was not the outside parents but the non-resident MAs, who had the right to speak and vote in the Senate. It was they, rather than the central figures at Cambridge, who defeated earlier proposals for change. Both 65 66 67 68 69 70

CUR, 5 October 1915, 50ff. and 23 May 1916, 789. CUR, 10 Decem ber 1918, 261-2. 22 May 1906. Quoted by Stray (1986) 38. W ortham (1927) 49. Decem ber 1904 (Green).

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sides appealed extensively to non-resident voters; as well as all the Press coverage and flysheets, often circulated with reply postcards for signing, this included circulating timetables of special extra trains, promising cars to meet them, lunches in colleges, loan of gowns for voting and assistance in finding overnight accommodation. The influence of the clergy has already been seen; around two thousand non-residents swamped the 1905 vote, comprising 75% of the poll.71 As these masses of alumni continued to thwart proposals for change, the essential conservatism of those nostalgic enough for their own time at Cambridge to return to block reform became a clear problem72 - Maitland (Professor of Law) parodied their argument to the Senate as ‘oh I am a gentleman and I learnt the verb in \ii therefore people who do not learn the verb in pit belong at best to the lower middle classes’.73 Schoolmasters, traditionally insiders notwithstanding at which public school they were currently teaching, had objectives potentially conflicting with those of the University. Their position was complicated by the spread of new kinds of schools and their school­ teachers, which shared with modern universities some challenging ideals of education. The clergy, traditionally so integral to the University but also to its conservatism, came to be seen as a minority inappropriately meddling in affairs more properly of wider interest. The 1913 syndicate was appointed following a memorial organised not by headmasters and politicians but by Cambridge residents. The University had to balance independence against insular marginality and the penalties, material and other, that implied for itself as well as for schools or students. From the start, some saw this as the clear question. In 1870 a far-sighted commentator on Lyttelton’s letter wrote: Does the University ... wish to remain at the head of England’s schools and education? Or only of such schools as can be bribed by scholarships to follow a narrow curriculum that does not satisfy the nation, and for so long only as that nation may choose to leave the funds for offering such bribes uncontrolled? If the latter we had better ... change our title of ‘University’ for ‘Academy’.74 If the former, the way forward was clear if unpopular. The Master of Peterhouse asked those who joined him in looking forward not to adopt the tones of Cassandra, ‘b u t... neither, he hoped, would the Senate content itself with answering like the Chorus “Even now I do not understand”. The time had come to understand - and to act’.75 The Chancellor had urged in 1903 not resistance but response to national wants, as ‘popular’ parental pressure began to take effect in national education. He wrote: ‘Cambridge will 71 From statistics in Times, 6 March 1905, 9 and 4 Novem ber 1905, 6. 72 A thenaeum , 1 April 1905, 399; cf. CambR, 9 March 1905, 242, on the older average age of clergy than of other voters. 73 CUR, 17 December 1904, 373. 74 CUR, 2 Novem ber 1870, 67. 75 CUR, 17 D ecember 1904, 360.

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have to decide whether it will take part in and direct the movement or will stand aside and submit to an inevitable loss of its prestige and present position of national importance’.76 These debates had evolved in the nineteenth century, where franchise expansion had come as ‘Reform that we may preserve’; after the war, as political, social and educational concessions were made to national wants, Cambridge needed to adjust to these for its own self-preservation into the twentieth century. Our instinct that the debates over Compulsory Greek at Cambridge must have been of minority interest and unimportant relative to such causes célèbres as the admission of women is anachronistic; the Senate may not have seen fireworks and riots in 1905 as it did at the women’s polls of 1897 and 1920 but more people went there to vote. An Oxbridge issue could hardly have been more serious, and as the traditional links with and voting rights in Cambridge of the country’s leaders in many fields were only gradually eroded by reform in various spheres, such issues were still of national importance. Seen in context, it is not surprising that at each round before the war the Greek campaigns were of massive interest, not only in Cambridge but in London society and in The Times, caused unprecedented acrimony and extended over half a century. Even given the general paucity of writing on nineteenth-century Cambridge,77 the lack of writing on this topic is surprising, and this has necessarily been a highly selective introduction. It was the War, and the social upheaval it implied, which forced the debates sharply into perspective, and to resolution. Before that, abolition threatened too many areas too important to the Victorians for reform to come easily. The fundamental importance of the issue to the world of its disputants, and the intractable nature that importance gave to its discussion, is well captured in 1904 after a Union Society debate on Compulsory Greek: [This is] one of those questions on which ... there is some radical difference of outlook which no argument however keen can succeed in probing ... Speaker tilted at speaker ... with plumes flying and lance in rest, but in their headlong career they never met; just when one waited breathlessly for the clash of arms, some impalpable division seemed to rise up, and the two combatants dashed off unharmed into the region of the irrelevant.78 Like so much else, Compulsory Greek was a casualty of far greater ‘clashes of arms’. In stark contrast to the axiomatic respect accorded it by the nineteenth-century British élite, who flocked in their thousands to defend it, by 1919 its ‘plumes and lances’ were nowhere to be found and its supporters numbered a mere fifteen. In the month that the peace conference met at Versailles, the question of Compulsory Greek was no longer one of the central issues of the day. 76 See n. 24. 77 Brooke (1993) xvi. 78 CambR, 4 February 1904, 169.

The Spread o f Education Maid. “No, Mum, Em not going to stay in this house to be insulted by having ‘sla v ey’ written on the mat. ” Figure 16. The spread of education. A cartoon from Punch, 5 February 1919, 97.

VI

THE INVENTION (AND RE-INVENTION) OF ‘GROUP D’: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CLASSICAL TRIPOS, 1879-19841 Mary Beard SECTION A: irrelevance will be penalised Dead examination papers - long dead ones especially - make riveting reading. A voyeuristic pleasure; a safely academic form of self-torture; or an irresistible continuation of those nightmare recollections we all share ... the wrong exam room, the wrong day, the wrong set book, the wrong (or, worse, the right) place on the classlist. They are a sharp reminder that, however many thousands of examination scripts we may now have marked, our cultural memory stamps us all as exam ines not examiners; in our dreams we are always sitting, not setting, the papers. But they also engage us, more directly than almost anything else can, in the history of our own subject. Could we now answer those questions set in the 1890s? Would our answers pass muster? Do we even understand what the questions were asking? Do they show us just how much we still hold in common with the undergraduates who first read and answered them (and the teachers who set them)? Or do the sometimes striking simi­ larities of form, content and (no doubt) nervous exam-room ceremonial only serve to point up much more radical differences between ‘our’ subject and ‘theirs’? It is a faceto-face confrontation with the classics of the past, its reassuring familiarity and, at the same time, its baffling strangeness. In the Classical Tripos papers set in Cambridge a century ago we do certainly find a number of questions that look comfortably like our own. ‘Compare briefly the social 1

This paper is part of (what has turned into) a larger project on the history of classics; it began with the story of the Museum of Classical Archaeology ( ‘Casts and Cast-offs: the origins of the Museum of Classical Archaeology’, PCPS 39 (1993), 1-29) and will continue with a closer look at the origins of one particular more-than-local classical legend in The invention o f Jane Harrison (Harvard University Press, 2000); and, I’m afraid, there may be more to come. My partners in crime, and exemplary midwives of this particular paper, have been John Henderson (who, from the very beginning, shared and sharpened my interests in the culture of classics) and Chris Stray. Please read this paper alongside Henderson (1998) and Stray (1998a); for a prequel see Stray (1997a, 1997b). Others have helped in various ways: especially Robert Cook, William St Clair, Anthony Snodgrass and the staff of the Manuscript Room in the University Library (in whose care are two guard books - CUR 28.7 and 28.7.1 - in which are collected most of the printed letters and flysheets referred to below); and not forgetting the Cambridge University Reporter (back to 1870) or Venn (1940-54).

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position of women at Athens, Sparta and at Rome’ (Part II, 1896) would not need much alteration to slip unnoticed into a paper of the 1990s; nor would ‘Compare the position and treatment of slaves and the organisation of slave-labour (a) in Attica in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., (b) in Italy under the early Empire’ (Part II, 1899) or the almost discon­ certingly up-to-the-minute ‘What do we know of the plan of ordinary Greek dwellinghouses? Mention any extant examples’ (Part II, 1891). And, even if we might now hesitate to set an old chestnut like ‘In what respects does the architecture of the later Parthenon differ from that of earlier Doric temples’ (Part II, 1888) or ‘Give some account of the works and the style of Leochares or of Timotheus’ (Part II, 1895), they are still our old chestnuts; clichés that link us with our predecessors, our interests and our questions with theirs. The answers, on the other hand, are an entirely different matter. So far as I have been able to discover, no early examination script survives from Cambridge (or elsewhere); we actually do not know what any of the candidates wrote, how much or how well.2 Even so, it is easy enough to see that the most familiar questions might - or must - have prompted the most unfamiliar answers. In part this is a consequence of different intel­ lectual priorities, styles and theories: to be asked in 1896 to compare the ‘social position’ of women in Athens, Sparta and Rome was quite simply a different problem from the ‘same’ comparison in 1996. But the differences run wider and deeper than that. Take a closer look at the wording of the papers, and try to work out what exactly the candidates were being asked to do. Does ‘Mention ...’ (as in ‘Mention any extant examples’ or ‘Mention the chief Craft-Guilds of Rome and their presiding deities’ (Part II, 1889)) mean just that; or is it nineteenth-century jargon for ‘discuss’? And what of ‘List ...’ (as in ‘Give a list of the chief existing Doric and Ionic (Greek) temples’ (Part II, 1888)) or ‘Enumerate ...’ (as in ‘Enumerate the priestly clans of Ancient Greece’ (Part II, 1890)? Did the candidates (or the best ones, at least) instantly spot that these questions were 2

Nor have I found any candidates’ accounts of what they wrote and how they tackled the questions. Though these must surely exist somewhere - in letters home, for example. The closest I have come is in Parry (1926), 15, with extracts of letters by Henry Jackson (Trinity, Third Classic 1862, Regius Professor of Greek 1906-21, died 1921) to his brother, describing (implausibly) the exam technique of Richard Jebb (Trinity, Senior Classic 1862, Regius Professor of Greek 1889-1905, Member of Parliament for the University 1891-1905, died 1905): ‘Since the first paper I have not been particularly silly: but we have most of us been terribly pressed for time. The pace is extraordinary. Jebb appears to be doing very well: I watched him at work today: he reads over a piece and then seems to translate without referring to the original, and so of course can go at a pace much greater than people with ordinary memories.’ Also suggestive are published crammers for the classical papers in the Civil Service examinations, with their model answers (for an idea, see ‘the pith of what has been written by the best scholars on the subject’ in Bryce (1884); though many Cambridge heavyweights were keen to blazon the incomparability of the Civil Service examinations and the Tripos (see below, p. 126). In general, published sources stress what we now regard as the conventional examinees’ complaints: that exams are arbitrary tests and (echoing Jackson) little more than a three-hour race. See, for example, M.C.C., an under­ graduate, writing on ‘The Classical Tripos’ in Light Blue 3 (1868), 222-6: ‘At present it is quite a lottery ... whether any given book will be ‘set’ or n o t... In 1867 the following authors do not appear in the examination papers: Terence, Propertius, Tibullus, Lucan, Persius, Juvenal, Caesar, Pliny, Xenophon, Theocritus, Sophocles.’ ‘ Nowadays a man must be not only well prepared, but he must also have the pen of a very ready writer in order to dash through his papers. The very best men can only finish in time by a scramble and a rush. Many excellent scholars have never finished a classical honor paper in the Senate-House, simply because they cannot write fast enough.’ (Describing the so-called ‘Intermediate Tripos’, before the reforms of 1879; see below, pp. 109-10. The author was probably M.C. Cullinan, who was Second Classic in 1868.)

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asking for something different from ‘Write a short article on ... ’ (as in ‘Write a short article on the playing of dice by the Greeks and Romans’ (Part II, 1897)) or ‘Point out... ’ (as in ‘Point out traces in Greek ritual of human sacrifice’ (Part II, 1893)). Or is it the same impenetrable compromise between (purely) rhetorical variation and significant instruction that we can recognise in our own littering of exam papers with such phrases as ‘discuss’, ‘do you agree?’ or ‘analyse’. Even more unsettling are the rubrics that head the papers. ‘You are recommended to answer some questions fully rather than many questions partially’ was the instruction that greeted the candidates in four of the Part II examinations in ‘Section D’ (Archaeology) in 1883. Ten or eleven questions followed. How many was the good candidate expected, in practice, to answer? Did everyone ‘know’ that you did six for a first, five for a good second? Or was the code just as puzzling to the class of 1883 as it is to us? Was each on-the-spot decision (Question 3 or not Question 3?) always a risk, always a gamble with the examiners, new each time? And, if so, did the different instructions that came and went over the next decade add to, or ease, the confusion?: 1884, ‘You are recommended to attempt, partially at least, not less than six of these questions’; 1886, ‘You are not expected to answer more than six questions in this paper’; 1888, ‘Not more than 7 questions are to be attempted, among which VII, IX and XIII should be included’; 1891, ‘Not less than half the questions to be attempted’ ... Was it then an act of forgetfulness, an admission of defeat or a self-confident assumption that the candidates did not need (or were not helped by) complex rubrics, when in 1892 and 1893 the examiners omitted such instructions altogether, except to designate a few particular questions as compulsory? Answer as many questions as you feel like?3 Carefully chosen words or not? Maybe our well-meaning examiners throughout the first decades of (as we shall see) the ‘New Classical Tripos’ were doing their level best to ‘get it right’; honing the questions, honing their own expectations, redesigning the papers as they went along; each new rubric representing that little adjustment that was to make all the difference at the margins of discrimination; the finest of fine tuning. Or maybe not. A product, perhaps, of careless, rather than care/w/, setters; the decision of a split second ... think of a number. And barely noticed by the candidates themselves. After all which of us could explain how our own rubrics matterl Could we describe under precisely what circumstances, and how, we penalise the irrelevance that ‘Will be penalised’? Do we imagine that candidates would feel free to write ‘bad English’, if they were not always reminded that ‘It is important to write good English’?4 3

4

The rubrics in the other Tripos sections tell a similar story: for exam ple, ‘You may, if you think well, send up full answers to six questions only: of which one at least must be taken from each of the sections A, B, C ’, ‘Full credit may be obtained by sufficient answers to six questions, two at least of which should be taken both from A and B; but you are at liberty to attempt a greater num ber’, ‘Full credit may be obtained by sufficient answers to six questions, of which it is suggested that three at least should be taken from A and two from B; but you are at liberty to attem pt a greater num ber’ (all from Section E, 1883). The central point is probably that these rubrics only pretend to be aimed at the candidates ‘on the day’. They police the exam iners as much as the candidates; they send messages to supervisors about what, and how, to teach; they are the voice of ‘the U niversity’ speaking to itself about what is to count as ‘translation’ here. Hence the disputes (much less trivial than they are painted) when such rubrics are changed.

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But - arbitrary or not - the changing rubrics of a century ago and the apparent fluidity in the numbers of questions answered or required clearly hint at a ‘philosophy of exam­ ination’ quite different from our own, a different set of assumptions about who or what is being tested. We claim - indeed boast - that we mark papers, not candidates; we think it no paradox to evaluate some of our students as highly gifted but poor examinees; first-class brains with second-class scripts. And it is in this context that we must understand some of the central principles of today’s examining in the Classical Tripos: that candidates are anonymous, numbers not persons; that each script is as fairly as possible judged against others, on the basis of a fixed number of questions, carrying clearly defined marks;5 that an individual candidate’s papers can be divided between a number of examiners, none of whom will see them all. These principles had no part in the nineteenth-century Tripos - and are much younger than we often imagine. In fact, it was not until the 1920s that a fixed number of questions in each paper became the rule in classics (and it was not until the mid-1960s that what we regard as the ‘standard’four questions in three hours appeared);6 and anonymity was introduced into Part II only in 1984.7 For the examiners at work in the 1880s and 1890s it was emphatically the man, not the scripts, who was being judged: ‘In Cambridge exami­ nations ... examiners get to know the man, and feel confident, as the examination goes

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Note how we try to rem em ber to point out if each question on a paper does not carry equal marks: ‘The exam iners will give equal weight to each section’ (so from 1996 in Part I translations, to rem ind candidates that three passage of translation from verse in Section A carried the same m arks as the two passages of prose in Section B); som etim es veering towards the obvious - ‘Attem pt three questions including Question 1. Approxim ately one third of the marks are allocated to Question 1; the remaining marks are divided equally among the other two questions attem pted’ (a logical absurdity stopped in time by the Faculty Board, 1998). It’s a question of ensuring a level playing-field forjudging answer against answer, not script against script (still less candidate against candidate); a level playing-field over which many exam iners walk when they mark answer by answer (i.e. all the answers to Question 1, follow ed by all the answers to Question 2), rather than paper by paper. Being progressively reduced in the 1990s, as I write, to three questions in three hours in Part II. The only Tripos exam ination in Cam bridge (so far as I know) to retain papers that perm it flexibility in the num ber of questions answered is the Mathematical Tripos ( ‘Each question is divided into Part (i) and Part (ii), which may or may not be related. Candidates may attempt either or both Parts of any question, but must not attem pt parts from more than six questions. The num ber of marks for each question is the same, with Part (ii) of each question carrying twice as many marks as Part (i). Additional credit will be given for a substantially com plete answer to either P art.’ Mathem atical Tripos, Part II, A2 1997). I have induced no m athem atician to speak, other than mystically, about the principles and practice of their marking schemes. In 1981 the Exam iners’ Reports note that ‘one exam iner wishes to recom m end that in future candidates should be numbered, not named, on their scripts’; in 1982 the issue was raised again, and the examiners came up with the usual objections ( ‘vivas would be im possible to conduct anonym ously ... liaison with other triposes would be more difficult ... [it] would be a facade anyw ay’) and ‘agreed to recom m end no change’; but the climate of propriety had changed just two years later. Now, it is anonymity - up to a certain point. In 1997 it was decided that the numerical code of candidates should be broken before the final meeting of exam iners to class the candidates. In fact, it is at this final meeting that the voice of quite different exam ining principles can still be heard: laments, for example, that no one exam iner (or group of exam iners) has seen all (or most) of the work of a single candidate/num ber. Anonymity was introduced into Part I for the exam ination of 1970; the code is (and has always been) broken only after the ‘num bers’ have been classed.

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on, in their appreciation of him.’ So (even) Henry Jackson in 1896s - the most deceptively modern of the late Victorians and the closest thing to a hero that this paper will have.9 Jackson would not have worried at all that the candidate’s name and college headed his question paper; or that he had a certain freedom in choosing how many questions to answer. Quality was the thing. Jackson and his contemporaries were more concerned with seeing enough of an individual candidate’s work to make a judgement.10 It is this theme - the simultaneous familiarity and strangeness of Cambridge classics a hundred, even fifty, years ago - that underlies the rest of this paper. As we explore the early history of ‘our’ Tripos, we shall find laments on ‘standards’ and on ‘schools’ unsettlingly similar to our own nostalgic rhetoric; we shall find ‘our’ problems were ‘their’ problems too. Paradoxically (or predictably, perhaps ) the very age to which we look back as the hey-day of linguistic fluency was itself preoccupied with the apparent inadequacy of the undergraduates to the translation tasks set. (‘I believe that 9/10 of the verse exercises which Tripos examiners now have the painful duty of marking are mere strings of classical phrases, in no sense translations of the English, and most

8 CUR, 18 February 1896,510. 9 See above, n. 2. 10 The com plexity of the New Tripos (exam ined from 1882 onwards; see below, pp. 105, 110-13) meant that in practice the exam iners did not see a com plete run of papers from any individual candidate; but many of their discussions on the organisation of exam ining still hanker back to that old system as an ideal. O f course, every ideology of testing is fractured. Their fractures are clearest in the (to us) inter­ minable argum ents throughout the Tripos reforms of the late nineteenth-century about whether or not to retain an Order o f M erit in their class-list. The crucial issues were how far men could not only be judged but also precisely ranked in an essentially ‘m ixed’ exam ination; and how far raw marks indicated true merit: ‘M r Burn (Robert Bum , Shrewsbury School, Trinity; Senior Classic 1852; died 1904) ... thought it alm ost im possible to place men in order of merit in such a mixed Exam ination as the new Tripos, where the subjects were not sufficiently hom ogeneous to afford a just com parison.’ (CUR , 2 June 1874, 430); ‘M r Verrall (A.W. Verrall, Trinity, Second Classic 1873, first Edward VII Professor of English 1911-12, died 1912) th o u g h t... [a] mark was useful to the exam iner as a guide o f his impression ... but in assigning marks to two candidates the difference in the marks given depended so much more on how many candidates happened to com e between the two in merit than on what the real difference between the merit of the two was. If marks were only a guide for impressions, this mattered little.’ (CUR, 1 April 1879, 494). In the course of these discussions, we get a few sidelong glim pses into the local conventions of marking in the late nineteenth century: for example, ‘M r Freeman ... thought that the difficulty felt in m arking the candidates in the Classical Tripos was mainly due to the small num ber of marks assigned to each question. W hile in other exam inations 100 marks would be given to a question, the classical exam iners gave perhaps six marks, and thus one mark m ade a great difference.’ (CUR, 1 April 1879, 494). See also, for m arking practice, Robert B urn’s mark books for the Classical Tripos 1862 (Trinity, Burn Papers B 1-9) and the digests of average percentages for each class of the Tripos occasionally paraded in justification of some particular piece of reform. The figures for 1853-5 are a neat illustration either of the arbitrariness of marking schemes or of what we would call ‘a failure to use the upper range of m arks’ (and what Jackson more trenchantly called ‘fear of m arks’ (CUR, 1 April 1879, 495)): the average percentage mark gained on the History paper by the first-class candidates was 35%, by the second-class candidates 21%, and by the third-class candidates 10%; otherwise the ‘best’ and ‘w orst’ papers for the first-class candidates were Greek Verse Translation 75%, Latin Verse Com position 59%; for the second-class candidates, Latin Verse Translation 63%, Greek Verse Com position 34%; for the third-class candidates, Latin Verse Translation 47%, Greek Verse Com position 14%.

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Figure 17. Henry Jackson, Regius Professor of Greek 1906-21 and the leading reform er of the Classical Tripos. After the portrait in oils by Charles W. Furse, 1889.

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awkwardly put together’11 was a sentiment that rung as true in 1896 as in 1996.) We shall also find arguments for or against Tripos reform in the late nineteenth century that would hardly look out of place in the debates of the late twentieth (such as, Can you timetable it? ... ‘He would beseech members of the Senate who were practical teachers to sit down with the average man in their mind’s eye, and to work out on paper a statement of the number of lessons, lectures and papers, and hours, which would be needed to bring that average man to a fit condition for examination in that wide range of subjects.’12)And we shall even discover that some of our own favourite inventions are no more (and no less) than re-inventions of the bright ideas of the nineteenth century. Who would have guessed, for example, amidst all the carefully anodyne arguments for the radical new dissertation option in 1972 (‘The Faculty Board of Classics ... believe it to be educationally desirable that students should have the opportunity, if they wish, to gain credit for work done in their own time and on a subject of their own choosing ... ’) that there had been a dissertation option in the Tripos (in Section E, Philology) as long ago as the 1880s?13 Certainly not the Faculty Board of 1972, who cited in their own defence only ‘precedents already existing] in several other Triposes’.14 But behind the glaring sim ilarities-the ‘same’ subject, the ‘same’ Tripos, the ‘same’ concerns, the ‘same’ arguments, the ‘same’ place - there are as many mismatches as matches. For all its allure of familiarity, we shall find that the Cambridge Classics Faculty in the late nineteenth-century is also a very foreign country; much more difficult to read than we would like to imagine. This is not just a question of changing priorities; though it is true that some of the issues that seemed so important to them (and were debated over long hours, in speeches taken down verbatim by the valiant stenographers

11 E.C. Clark (Shrewsbury School, St John’s, Senior Classic 1858, Regius Professor of Civil Law 1873-1913, died 1917), ‘A letter addressed to the Public O rator on his and M r B urn’s scheme for a union of the Classical Tripos exam ination with the Chancellor’s Medal E xam ination’, May 1866. C lark’s nostalgia was com bined with what might look like a quasi-political com m itm ent to ‘access’: ‘the present influence o f com position ... does, I believe, deter many studious non-public school m en’ ( though he presum ably had in mind the under-privileged élite from private - rather than the great ‘public’ - schools; those struggling under the disadvantage of not having been to (K ennedy’s) Shrewsbury). 12 J.S. Reid (Christ’s and Caius, Senior Classic 1869, Professor of Ancient History 1899-1924, died 1926), CUR, 29 Novem ber 1898, 287; cf. A.A. Vansittart (Trinity, Second Classic 1847, died 1882- h i s greatest m onum ent was probably ‘Pinehurst’, Grange Road, the pile he built as his marital hom e), letter, 16 May 1866 (see below, nn. 30, 33 & 59): ‘[The list of set books] should contain as many books as a man of m oderate abilities and not immoderate idleness can fairly be expected to read through while an under­ graduate.’ 13 Introduced in Part II of the New Tripos, first exam ined 1882 (see below, p. 105). ‘No essay shall be set in this Section [E]: but any candidate shall be at liberty to send up (a fortnight before the Exam ination begins) an English Essay on some subject com prised in this section, upon which he shall be exam ined viva voce, at such time and in such m anner as the Exam iners shall decide’ (CUR, 11 M arch 1879, 439). 14 CUR, 16 February 1972, 569. And not John Chadwick (Corpus and Downing, Classics Part II 1946, First Class, Reader in Classics 1969-84, died 1998) either, who lectured the Senate on the folly of such an innovation (T do not find the idea of theses a satisfactory method of exam ination at undergraduate level; in the vast majority of cases they will consist o f a jejune rehash of inform ation gleaned from text books . . . ’), apparently unaware of (or maybe not divulging) the fact that his own Philology Caucus had been the original pioneer of such a ‘method of exam ination’ alm ost a hundred years before.

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of the Reporter) no longer matter very much to us (or have long been settled): the rela­ tionship of the Tripos to the Civil Service Examination; whether a history paper belongs in Part I; whether Sanskrit is essential for all those intending to take Group E (Philology) in Part II. Even more disconcerting is our own inability, a hundred years on, to fathom the politics of these debates. How were the paraded allegiances and friendships formed? How did people come to support the side they did? And how can we now, at this distance, distinguish the mavericks (shooting their mouths off on their favourite topic at any opportunity ...) from the Faculty heavyweights, the men who got things done? How can we tell the wickedly ironic from the deadly serious?15 Occasionally, we (like to think we) can. It is hard to read accounts of any classical debate at Cambridge between the 1870s and the 1910s and not detect the clear, consistent, witty and discon­ certingly sensible voice of Henry Jackson. But the others, big players like Jebb amongst them, are much less easy to pigeon-hole.16 Part of the problem, I suspect, is our assumption that the hallmark of late nineteenthcentury Cambridge was a deep and clearly defined division between radicals and conservatives: on the one side, those who favoured - women at the university, married dons, freedom of religious expression, the abolition of Compulsory Greek in the Previous exam, more philosophy and less verse composition in the Classical Tripos; on the other, those who wanted to keep - women beyond Hitchin, Greek as a necessary qualification for a Cambridge degree, Anglicanism and celibacy as requirements for a fellowship, and ‘pure scholarship’ (i.e. an unadulterated diet of translation and composition) in the Classical Tripos. In fact, very few people indeed could be so neatly categorised.17Academic allegiances (as we know well from our own debates on Tripos

15 W hen, in the course of a discussion in 1879 on how to class the New Tripos, Henry Jackson asserted that ‘the men could always be divided into three classes’, was he making a joke, with a neat classical allusion, designed to bring smiles to the faces in the audience? Was he seriously arguing that three classes (rather than the five that some advocated) accurately represented the divisions of student ability? And/Or was it a useful tactical ploy against those still batting for a rigid Order of M erit? Can we now tell? And could they? (CUR, 1 April 1879,495). 16 Inevitably, other sources of inform ation help provide a social and intellectual context for the raw debates transcribed in the Reporter, letters, memoirs, jokes in college magazines etc., etc. But not, in my experience, as much as you might hope. 17 Almost everyone was, in our terms, ‘liberal’ on some issues and ‘conservative’ on others: Jane Harrison, for exam ple, favoured Com pulsory Greek; Richard Jebb was both a leading player in the cam paign to retain the Greek requirem ent in the Previous Exam (hosting the council of war at his own house, 4 August 1891), and a major ‘reform er’ where the Tripos was concerned; the Rev. Professor J.E.B. Mayor (Shrewsbury School, St John’s, Third Classic 1848, University Librarian 1864-7, Professor of Latin 1872-1910, died 1910) was rather touched by all the ‘young m arried folk’ he found around the college, though had no truck with the ‘barbarians’ plotting to abandon Com pulsory Greek and was throughout the m ost consistent m averick in Tripos reform (Henderson (1998) 4 and passim). Even the almost universally liberal Jackson ‘sneaked’ to the University Librarian when he spotted Jane Harrison (Newnham, Part II 1879, Second Class (unofficial), icon, died 1928) carrying a book from the University Library (which, as a woman, she was not entitled to borrow). Hardly striking a blow for w om en’s access to higher education; m aybe he just couldn’t stand her - though he did write a testimonial for her application to the Chair of Classical Archaeology at University College, London. (Newnham College Archive, Harrison Papers).

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and other reform over the last twenty years) are bound in a much more complex structure of competing (and changing) obligations and pressures: political principles, long-standing personal friendships (or antipathies), college loyalties, conflicting intel­ lectual divisions (Hellenists vs. Romanists; historians vs. philosophers; textual critics vs. cultural theorists), grinding ambitions, strategic calculations and gnawing jealousies. Some very predictable - and some very unpredictable - bedfellows are the inevitable result. So too in the nineteenth century. Behind the fine words written on the flysheets and spoken in the University discussions (which, for many of the debates, are the only evidence we now have) are a whole range of other words (pressures, bribes, collusions, favours cashed in or repaid ...) that we can no longer hear nor read. Each debate (and I am concentrating in this paper on those that specifically concern the content and scope of the Tripos) was played out against a background of other debates in which the very same men were engaged (from Greek in the Previous Exam and the invention of the Moral Sciences Tripos to the tenancy of the University Farm). And many were also conducted against the background of (and/or in the face of) outside, governmental pressures on the University to reform - to bring itself into the nineteenth century. Sometimes even the swornest of enemies had to stick together (or at least mind their tongues) and produce a common front; else ‘solutions’ none of them might want might simply be imposed.18 We would be deluding ourselves if we thought we could understand what was at stake for all those Victorian speechmakers when they stood up to make their contribution to the debate of the day. We are dealing too with a subject that is different; it is not just nineteenth-century classicists who seem both familiar and strange in equal measure; it is also nineteenthcentury classics.This paper focuses on the history of one element in the Tripos: Section D (Archaeology), which was invented, and first taught, for Part II of the New Tripos devised in 1879. As its title suggests, it is the direct ancestor of our own late twentiethcentury Group D - with its familiar spread of ‘Art and Archaeology’, from ‘preHellenic’ to ‘later Roman’; the shaft graves to the arch of Constantine. But the original Section D had a very different sphere of reference. All the Tripos questions I have so far quoted in this paper (from the social position of women and the history of gambling to the style of Leochares and the Doric order) are questions that were set in the early Section D. For in its early years D included not only ‘Art and Archaeology’ in our terms (‘The History of Art’, ‘Special Sites’, ‘Numismatics’, ‘Inscriptions’) but also ‘Mythology’, ‘Religion’ and ‘(Domestic) Antiquities’ (which might include anything from food and clothing to ancient sport and 18 The activities of the Royal and Statutory Com m issioners through the 1870s, and the various syndicates appointed by the University in response to (with the backing of, or as a pre-emptive strike against) their recom m endations are described in W instanley (1947) 263-359, Leedham -Green (1996) 146-86 (with a survey of the earlier reform ing cam paigns in the 1850s). It was this series of reform s across colleges and University at large that produced som ething like the University we know today: coordinated dates of undergraduate residence for all colleges (so that intercollegiate teaching became feasible for the first time); the establishm ent of readerships, the General Board, the Financial Board, D.Litt.s and D.Sc.s; joint holding o f fellowships and university offices; professorial quotas at colleges; and so on.

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education). In the essay paper attached to the Section (one question in three hours; ‘the subjects shall be so chosen as fairly to represent the several departments of the Section’) we find questions on totemism (1888) as well as trade-routes (1892); Greek music (1895) as well as Roman water supply (1883); theories of myth (‘The various principles that may be applied to the interpretation of mythology; their advantages and their defects’, 1896) as well as theories of art criticism (1888). The lists of examiners also tell the same (intellectual) story. In the first year that Section D was examined (1883; there had been no candidates in 1882, the first year of the New Tripos), the examiners were Sidney Colvin19 and J.G. Frazer.20 I shall be concentrating on the early years of Section D: through whose influence ‘Archaeology’ (in any sense) found a place in the New Tripos; who first taught it; and how it was gradually redefined so that by the 1920s it had lost its myth, religion and antiquities and had become (to all intents and purposes) the Group D we know today. But I shall also be wondering about what happened to religion and mythology after it had been expunged from the (newly sanitised version of) Group D; quite how, in our Tripos, ancient ‘religion’ came to belong with ancient ‘philosophy’. And I shall be wondering too if any of the traditions of the old Section D, the collocations of interests that it represented, still survive. That brings us right up to the minute. This paper, then, is an essay in (very) local history; a shameless exercise in curiosity about what classics at Cambridge used to be like.21 But it has wider significance in the story of intellectual history. As we shall see in the next Section (B), the way in which Cambridge classics chose to define itself in the 1870s had major implications for the definition of English classics as a whole; the decisions taken in Cambridge in 1879 were instrumental in ensuring that (twentieth-century) ‘classics’ in this country would be very different from ‘classics’ in the rest of Western Europe. The particular character of Section D also lies at the heart of one of the major classical/anthropological movements of this century. The Cambridge ‘Ritualists’ (in their interest in religious ritual; and in their incorporation of visual as well as textual material) have often been portrayed as women (Jane Harrison) and men (Gilbert Murray, Francis Comford) at odds with the conventions and subject-boundaries of their day. This paper will suggest rather that they were very predictable daughters and sons of classics Section D, as originally defined. ‘Ritualism’ was bom within the Classical Tripos, not in opposition to it.22 As the choice 19 See below, p. 115. 20 Trinity, Second Classic 1878, died 1941. It is easy to forget that the father of social anthropology started life in (and never quit) classics: his fellowship dissertation was entitled ‘The growth of Plato’s Ideal theory’ and his first published work was a revision of L ong’s edition and com m entary on Sallust (1884); in 1884 he had already started the work that was to lead to the Golden bough (1890) and signed a contract with M acm illan’s for a translation of Pausanias. It is also easy to forget (underneath his popular image as an obsessive workaholic) that Frazer was also part of the ‘Cambridge scene’, one of the lads (the Cambridge Review (died 1998) was conceived, it is said, in his rooms in Trinity ‘on a broiling hot day during the vacation o f 1879’). See Ackerm an (1987) 17-69, and for Cam bR, ibid. 32 and 319 n. 31. 21 Com parisons with Oxford, London and other universities might obviously make a difference to the story; but would take a lot more space than I have. For big issues see Stray (1998a) passim. 22 See further Beard (2000).

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of Frazer to examine in 1883 suggests (however desperately last-resort it may have been),23 comparative anthropology did lie at the heart of late nineteenth-century classical archaeology.

SECTION B: Tripos reform ‘Our’ Classical Tripos goes back, in its essentials, to 1879. Prompted (in part, as we shall see) by the recommendations of the University’s ‘Double Honours Syndicate’, the Board of Classics replaced the old, undivided (one-Part) Tripos with a two-Part examination. Part I, much as today, was heavily (though not exclusively) concerned with language and translation: four papers of composition (Greek and Latin Verse, Greek and Latin Prose); five papers of translation (‘selected from the best Greek and Latin authors, together with questions arising immediately out of any such passages’); four ‘half papers’ on ‘Greek and Roman History (including Literature) and Antiquities’ and ‘Greek and Latin Grammar and Criticism’. Lor the new Part II, the Board invented the basic structure we have inherited: five Sections - A, B (Philosophy), C (History), D (Archaeology) and E (Language). All students were to take A (which had not yet become ‘Literature’ in our sense, but consisted in four papers of prose composition and translations) and either one or two other sections. Each of these was made up of four specialist papers plus an essay paper (except that in Group E the essay paper was, as we have seen, replaced by an optional dissertation).24 All relatively familiar to us - but for the fact that Part II was itself entirely optional; Part I was all that was needed to qualify a candidate for an honours degree. The ‘Double Honours Syndicate’ (‘appointed May 31 1877, and reappointed October 10 1878, to consider whether, and if so, in what way, Students should be encouraged to read for Honours in more than one Tripos’)25 provided an important stimulus to these new arrangements; but the origin of the reforms goes back much further than that to a memorial circulated on 26 April 1866 by W.G. Clark26 and R. Burn - advocating a major extension of the subjects covered in the (single) Classical Tripos, and limiting the significance of ‘Pure Scholarship’. In fact, reform had been brewing on and off since the 1850s: the Board of Classical Studies (the precursor of the Faculty Board) was established in 1854;27 in 1858 they tackled problems with the 23 W ho else could they have asked? Staffing (for teaching and exam ining) was, as we shall see, one of the central problem s in Section D ’s earliest years. But even if the request to Frazer was scraping the bottom of the barrel (so far as I know they never asked him again), it was also a clear signal about intellectual roots. 24 CUR, 11 M arch 1879, 436-40. 25 CUR, 11 March 1879,435. 26 Shrewsbury School, Trinity, Second Classic 1844, O rator 1857-69, died 1878. C lark’s assault on pure scholarship was presum ably strengthened by his own scholarly expertise (and charm): according to Venn (1940-54), a man ‘noted for his translations into Greek and Latin verse’ (as well as ‘one of the most brilliant and popular’ of the men about town). 27 Syndicate report, 21 M arch 1854; confirm ed 3 May 1854

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history paper (‘questions should be framed so as to discourage the use of compendiums and to promote the study of the original authorities’); and at the same time they limited to three the number of examiners marking each of the composition papers (previously all the examiners had marked all the proses and verses);28 but this did not do much to alleviate the excessive examining burden (they reckoned that, even with the reform, each examiner in 1859 had marked 494 scripts), so they began investigating a form of Preliminary Examination, to spread the load;29 and so on. But it was not until the memorial of Clark and Burn that the problems of the content of the Tripos were directly and publicly addressed. Clark and Burn’s proposal was to integrate the Chancellor’s Medal Examination into the Tripos itself. The Medal ‘should occupy the department of pure scholarship’, while the Tripos ‘should represent the union of scholarship with a wider knowledge of the subject matter of classical studies’. In practice this meant reducing the translation and composition papers to seven from ten (these were to constitute the Medal exams, no longer separate from the Tripos) and replacing the single existing history paper with four new ‘content’ papers (Plato’s Republic and the earlier history of philosophy; Aristotle’s Ethics and the later history of philosophy; Greek and Roman History and Antiquity; historical essay). They were quite explicit about their educational objectives: to give those who had been well-trained at school an opportunity to widen their horizons; and to make the Tripos more attractive for those who ‘have not had a public school training in composition ... Many of such students have a strong taste for classical literature and great ability in grasping historical and philosophical subjects, but verse composition is so difficult to them that the expenditure of time upon it entailed by the present Examination is enough to deter them from reading for Classical Honours.’ The proposals were not adopted (at least, not in that precise form); but the flood of responses and counter-proposals that they provoked over the next decade amount to a debate not just on the requirements of the Tripos but on the purposes of a classical education and on the definition of classics itself. Some of the suggestions made at that time must now appear zany in the extreme; but they are a clear reminder that ‘our’ version of classics was only one of the possible versions that might have emerged victorious out of the reforms of the 1860s and 70s. As we shall see, literally everything about classics - what was to be taught, how and to whom - was up for debate; it was an exercise in ‘thinking the unthinkable’. Perhaps the most crucial question was whether classics was to (continue to) be based on the study of ancient language (in its narrowest and/or widest sense); or whether it was to incorporate the ‘subject-matter’ of Greek and Latin literature. As A. A. Vansittart put it, the choice was before them ‘whether we shall make [the Tripos] a true palace of philology or a Gatherum Castle for every kind of learning that can claim any sort of 28 Report, 26 May 1858. 29 T h e Board of Classical Studies publishes a memorial from the exam iners’, 4 June 1859. The problem was caused by a rise in the num ber of candidates: ‘in the last three years ... the num bers [taking the Tripos] have been respectively 56, 55 and 71’; they estim ated that each script took half an hour to mark.

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relationship to the Classical languages’.30 No prizes for guessing which way he (and a good many others) jumped. For him, philology was classics; philosophy and history were not - and they belonged in their own Triposes (or at Oxford) but not in Cambridge classics?1 Even so, many questions remained open. What languages exactly was this concentration on language to include? Latin and Greek, of course. But might not the umbrella of philology also offer a way of ‘removing the present ignorance and indifference existing among many of our students as to all ancient languages but Latin and Greek, and all modem languages whatsoever including our own.’32 Sanskrit was an obvious candidate and had powerful backers as the third ancient language in the Tripos. Vansittart’s own scheme of Tripos reform (the elaborate fantasy of a philological ideologue, issued in response to Clark and Bum)33 starred a compulsory paper in Sanskrit: no philosophy, no history, no literature - just Greek and Latin Language, Comparative Philology and Sanskrit. (He might almost have thought he had convinced his colleagues, when a Sanskrit paper - with grammar questions and simple translations - was made part of Group E in the 1879 Tripos; but in fact the accompanying regulation, that ‘a candidate shall not be debarred from obtaining a place in the Lirst Class for the sole reason that he has omitted to take this [i.e. the Sanskrit] paper’, effectively sounded its death-knell.) As for the incor­ poration of modem languages, rather more ingenuity was needed - and forthcoming: 34not only the idea of a range of ‘modem’ set books,35 but a suggestion in 1868 from Clark himself that the men could be tested in ancient and modem languages at the same time, by setting a series of passages in Trench and German to be translated into Latin and Greek. 36 But the virtues of different forms of translation tests divided even those committed to philology and Pure Scholarship. Lor some, verse composition was still the pinnacle of a classical education; and there were some breathtaking new arguments, as well as nostalgic or trenchant appeals to tradition, to justify its retention. J.B. Pearson, for 30 16 May 1866. 31 As he m akes quite explicit (16 May 1866): philosophy ‘belongs more properly in the Moral Sciences T ripos’; and he advocated a new Ancient and M odern History Tripos to cope with history. Throughout these debates support for the form ation and growth of new Triposes in the University could come from all sides: on the one hand, those who supported a radical redefinition of a Cambridge education and what subjects it could offer; on the other, those who saw that kindly support for new Triposes could be an excellent alibi for keeping any such subjects out of the classics degree. 32 E.C. Clark, May 1866. 33 16 May 1866; J.R. Seeley (Christ’s and Caius, (bracketed) Senior Classic 1857; Regius Professor of M odem History 1869-95, died 1895) predictably (and correctly) found V ansittart’s scheme quite mad: ‘The introduction of Sanskrit into the Exam ination, in place of History, would, in my opinion, ruin the Exam ination finally’ (Letter, n.d. (1867)). 34 Sometimes with support from those of quite unphilological tendencies: so, for example, J.R. Mozley (K ing’s, Fifth Classic 1862, Professor of Mathem atics, M anchester 1865-85 and tireless reader in KC chapel, died 1931), who argued that a liberal education (i.e. classics) should help a man understand his own age as well as the past (Letter, 2 June 1866). 35 J.B. Pearson (St John’s and Emmanuel, Fourth Classic 1855, Rector of W hitstone, Cornwall 1883-1912, died 1918), Letter, 15 Novem ber 1866. 36 Letter, 23 March 1868. This was one of a pair of suggestions from Clark: the other was a proposal for a com pulsory dissertation ( ‘A som ewhat sim ilar plan has long been in vogue in Germany and many most valuable monographs have had their origin in a Degree T hesis’).

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example, thought that it was a right and proper function of the examination to test ‘the natural poetical talent of the examinee’; and that ‘the best modern poets would not have suffered by a preparation for the Classical Tripos had they been willing to submit to it.’ (Presumably it was similar arguments that led the Part I examiners of 1883, the second full year of the New Tripos, to set a passage of Platonic poetry - for translation first into English prose, then into English verse.37) But even some of the strictest philologists were beginning to have their doubts about imposing such a vast burden of verse composition on all the undergraduates: at best, ‘it was a graceful accomplishment, but not particularly useful for the purposes of Education’;38 its ‘influence ... deter[red] many non-public school men’39 from even attempting the Tripos; and frankly, it was generally done extremely badly (‘... of the time wasted at School and College in producing this lamentable result I need not speak’40). Proses were, by and large, exempt from such criticism - from ‘pure scholars’ and their opponents alike. Henry Sidgwick, for example, had no hesitation about advocating the complete abolition of verses from the Tripos (such a waste of time ‘for inferior men’); but thought prose composition a quite different matter (and an important training in ‘accurate rendering of English’ as much as Latin).41 But even proses were not sacrosanct. J.E.B. Mayor made the modest proposal that in Greek only Attic dialect should be required (‘considering the very limited number of men who write Greek at all accurately’);42 while E.M. Cope went out on a limb in suggesting that translations from Latin and Greek were by far the better mental test (‘It is this [i.e. close attention, accuracy and taste] which gives to translation its great superiority as a test of mental power and real knowledge over the so-called ‘Composition’; because by the former far higher powers are necessarily called into action than by the mere stringing together of well (or ill) remembered phrases to make, in verse a pleasant jingle, and in prose a cento of various styles ranging perhaps from Herodotus to Plutarch, or from Ennius to Ammianus Marcellinus.’)43 So where did this leave the question of essays as intellectual training or as an exam­ ination test? If the value of translations and compositions was disputed, what about the value of essays in history and philosophy? Here, at least so far as examinations were concerned, the Pure Scholars were in much closer agreement: essays produced in the space of three hours would almost inevitably be worthless (rewarding ‘shallowness and s u p e r f i c i a l i t y . . . a t t h e e x p e n s e o f g e n u i n e l e a r n i n g ’44) ; a n d t h e y w o u l d b e i m p o s s i b l e

37 Greek Translation; sat 22 May 1883. 38 E.M. Cope (Trinity, Senior Classic 1841, pipped at the post to the Regius Chair of Greek 1867, died, of thwarted ambition, 1873), Letter, 18 May 1866. 39 E.C. Clark, May 1866. 40 E.C. Clark, May 1866; in this round of discussion, it was only A. Holmes (Shrewsbury School, St John’s and Clare, Second Classic 1859, another losing candidate for the Greek chair 1867, killed him self 1875) who reckoned the verses pretty creditable, given the exam conditions (Letter, 19 May 1866). 41 Trinity (and Newnham ), Thirty-third W rangler and Senior Classic 1859, Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy 1883-1900, died 1900; Letter, n.d. (June 1866). 42 Letter, 25 May 1866. 43 18 May 1866. 44 E.M. Cope, 18 May 1866.

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to mark at all fairly (‘If it is hard to discriminate between feeble copies of Latin verse, it must be harder to mark justly illogical rambling essays.’45). The other side came to the support of both the medium and the message. Essays deserved a place in the Tripos: it was, after all, as Sidgwick put it, ‘no bad thing’ to be able to write good and persuasive English.46 And the subjects examined in the kinds of essay papers proposed were desirable, if not essential, components of a liberal education (for Life) - particularly philosophy (‘the advantage which a good scholar has over a fair scholar in life is scarcely appreciable; the advantage which a man who has reflected even a little upon the great problems of philosophy has over one who has never done so is considerable’47). For the Pure Scholars, of course, the subjects proposed were themselves potentially as dangerous to the Tripos as the essays through which they were to be tested. Of course, they argued, anyone who read ancient texts carefully would already be learning philosophy and history;48 but you opened a can of worms if you tried to examine those subjects independently. For a start (where have we heard this before?) there was a danger that students would depend on translations, not on wide reading in the original (hence the danger to Scholarship);49 and even worse than translations, they would be tempted to ‘cram’50 not from the great modem writers but from inferior textbooks, ‘epitomes soon learnt, sooner forgotten’. That, at least for J.E.B. Mayor, was the experience of the single existing history paper: ‘the reign of some English Florus has succeeded to that of Livy.’51 And always in the background was the dreadful spectre that teaching would be dominated by a plague of ‘tip-fancying’ (late nineteenth-century for ‘question-spotting’). It was already something of problem (so Mayor and Vansittart again) in the translation papers, with undergraduates neglecting the ‘best’ authors because they were less likely to ‘come up’ in the exam than the more off-beat: ‘Now voluminous authors, like Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, Livy are slighted by some in favour of the more “paying” remains of Hesiod, Pindar, Theophrastus (The Characters), Theocritus, Persius ... ’ 52 What a scandal. And was not history even more a ‘tip-fanciers’ paradise? Inevitably these discussions (in which hardly anyone had written or spoken a word wholeheartedly in favour of the status quo) resulted in a reform of the Tripos: a schedule of papers, known in later nineteenth-century jargon as the ‘Intermediate Tripos’, agreed in 1869 and examined for the first time in 1872. An uneasy compromise perhaps, with 45 46 47 48 49 50

J.E.B.M ayor, 25 May 1866. n.d. (June 1866). J.R. Seeley, Letter, n.d. (Novem ber 1866). A.A. Vansittart, Letter, 30 January 1867. See, for exam ple, E.M. Cope, 18 May 1866. ‘C ram ’ is the nineteenth-century equivalent of the modern undergraduate vice of ‘regurgitation’: for them they ‘cram m ed’ it all in; for us they spew it all out. W hat conclusion we should draw from this reversal of bodily metaphors, from passive to active, I simply do not know. 51 25 May 1866. 52 J.E.B. M ayor, 26 May 1866; see also A.A.Vansittart, 30 January 1867.

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a paper or two for all tastes - out of fourteen in all: four papers of Verse and Prose Compositions; one Ancient History paper; one Philology paper; six papers of translation (with questions attached); and two papers of translations from Greek and Latin Philosophy and Rhetoric, plus questions on the subject-matter.53 It didn’t satisfy many people for very long. By 1873 a damning critique of the history paper was circulated (with the usual accusations of undergraduate ignorance, cramming and tip-fancying), together with a proposal that it should be set around specified periods and authors.54 Soon enough the Regius Professor (and immortal Salopian) B.H. Kennedy55 was on his feet, finger in the dyke. The paper, he admitted, was indeed too difficult (apparently in the 1873 exam there had been no more than one question which - or so he reckoned - the very best candidates could answer with any hope of even reaching half marks); and so too was the philology paper. Some easier questions certainly ought to be included. But as for all the worries about cramming and tipfancying, surely it was up to the examiners to recognise (and penalise) cramming when they came across it.56 Later that year there was a formal Report of the Classical Board, followed by a grace proposing the introduction of set books into the history paper; it was non-placeted and defeated by 31 votes to 24.57 (The discussion of this Grace was the (what must have been famous) occasion when the prolixity of J.E.B. Mayor finally faced down the stenographers of the Senate-House: speaking in favour of the grace, he decided to treat the assembled company to some samples of the kind of lectures that would be appropriate under the new dispensation; on and on, he must have gone; the stenographers laid down their pens and took the almost unprecedented step of a summary - ‘Professor Mayor gave illustrations of the valuable kind of lecture which would be encouraged by such a limitation.’)58 It was this unfinished business, combined with the recommendations of the ‘Double Honours Syndicate’, that lay behind the New Tripos of 1879 (with whose Schedule of 53 Syndicate Report, 9 M arch 1869; a previous scheme (16 M arch 1868) containing only one paper of verse com position and five translation papers had been rejected by the Senate. 54 Report of the Classical Board, 26 May 1873. 55 Shrewsbury School, St John’s, Senior Classic 1827, Headm aster of Shrewsbury 1836-66, Regius Professor of Greek (in a tough com petition, by a very short head) 1867-89, died 1889. Prim er-writer (with his Newnham daughters) and child prodigy —the only boy to win the Porson prize while still at school (he was selected for the Browne medal too, but deem ed ineligible). Cf. Stoppard (1997) 3: (AEH speaks) ‘. . . a schoolmaster of genius, but a schoolmaster. It was only in an outbreak of sentimentality that Cam bridge named a chair after him. I w ould have countenanced a small inkpot.’ Stoppard’s Housman is both right and wrong: the decision in 1911 (just after the election of Housman) to name the chair after Kennedy, in fact, rode roughshod (some pietas) over his express condition (on coughing up £500 towards its foundation) that the chair should NOT be nam ed after him (see Henderson (1998) 103-15); but inspi­ rational - if not fanatically efficient - schoolmaster he certainly was (see J.E.B. M ayor’s obituary in CR 3 (1889) 278-81, with a description of a Kennedy lesson, and his school syllabus). W atch how many of the classicists in these footnotes are (K ennedy’s) Shrewsbury men. 56 Flysheet, n.d. (May/June 1873). 57 Report, 26 May 1873 = CUR, 27 May 1873, 83; revised, CUR, 6 D ecember 1873, 130 (to prescribe whole authors, not ‘portions’ of authors); vote, CUR, 10 February 1874, 227 and 17 February 1874, 235. 58 31 October 1873 (CUR, 4 Novem ber 1873, 70).

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Papers I began this Section).59 According to a thankful Kennedy, it was master-minded and guided through the discussions by Henry Jackson; if so, it was a predictably neat piece of footwork - combining a Part I (and, if you liked, an honours degree) that was as close to Pure Scholarship as you could wish with a Part II that emphatically claimed the various specialist sub-disciplines of the subject for the Classical Tripos itself; there was to be no classical diaspora through Moral Sciences and the other late nineteenthcentury Triposes; classics was to be the sum of its parts. More than a neat piece of footwork, this was to be the defining version of Cambridge - and (against the maverick heterodoxy of Oxford) English - classics. There were a few new participants in the debates around these proposals; but by and large the arguments were the same as they had been in the 1860s - only, with over a decade of practice, rather wittier, more sharply honed and rhetorically adept. They were also played out as much in the pages of The Times as of the Reporter. The ‘schoolmaster extraordinary’ (and unbearable) T.E. Page60 fired first with a letter to The Times on 10 March 1879: special subjects were an almost undiluted evil (exercising ‘a fatal fascination on candidates, inducing them greatly to neglect wide general reading of the great classical authors and stimulating to a large extent the ruinous practice of “cramming”’); too much change was a bad thing (‘whether ..., its once healthy constitution undermined by the continual drastic remedies of its own over-anxious guardians, the Classical Tripos will ultimately survive or not, may, in these circum­ stances be legitimately doubted’); the five-section Part II was ‘a pure freak of inventive genius’, a mere ‘experiment’ (‘and the corpus vile of this experiment is to be composed of the picked classical students of half of England’); the Pure Scholarship of Part I (‘practically identical with ... the Old Tripos’, as he rightly saw) was ‘degraded’ by the mere existence of the new Part II. The Times leader took up his arguments in the very same issue. With occasional gestures to impartiality (the old Cambridge scholarship will die - and that might not be a bad thing), the leader-writer finally concluded that parents were unlikely to waste their money on this sort of specialist study (‘[they] may prefer to send their sons at once into a solicitor’s office or a barrister’s chambers to having them returned on their hands from Cambridge secondrate archaeologists and indifferent philologists’).61 It was then open season. Kennedy wrote to the Times on 19 March, as did Burn (dismissing Page as a typical schoolmaster);62 and on the same day an anonymous ‘candidate’ weighed in on Page’s side, with a pitiful cry from the heart about the appalling demands the Tripos imposed 59 A divided Tripos had been on the agenda even without the Double Honours Syndicate; V ansittart’s Schedule of Papers, for exam ple, had been divided into a Part I and Part II (16 May 1866). 60 Shrewsbury School, St John’s, Second Classic 1873 (bracketed with Verrall, an unlikely com bination), sixth-form m aster at Charterhouse 1873-1910, editor Loeb Classical Library from 1910, died 1936. Rudd (1981) only inadvertently captures the true horror of the man; try the account of the m arriage, 24-5. 61 This leader also included the memorable claim that ‘Robinson Crusoe could have prepared him self as com pletely for taking a First Class at Oxford or the place of Senior Classic at Cam bridge as a student of Bonn or L eipsic’; apparently this was to the Tripos’ favour. 62 ‘Mr Page speaks very naturally from a schoolm aster’s point of view .’

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(‘The feelings of despair and helplessness caused by the utter impossibility of attempting to grapple with the Tripos, while it gradually bears down upon one like the monster in a nightmare, must be most hurtful in their effect on the candidate’). In fact, he had got it all wrong, and on 22 March Jackson wrote to tell him so; it was precisely this feeling of burden that the reforms were going to alleviate. By the time it came to the University discussion on 1 April, it must have been clear enough that (apart from one issue of classing and the Order of Merit) the reforms were going to be passed. Jackson held the floor with an elegantly triumphalist - and, at the same time, generous - speech, reviewing the history of the reforms: ‘He must go back for a time (he said) to the old Tripos, which came to an end in 1872, the golden age according to Mr Page, the age of “Pure Scholarship”. What their “Pure Scholarship” meant was this. They read Thucydides, but not Grote; they studied the construction of the speeches, but did not confuse themselves by trying to study their drift. They read the Phaedrus, but had no Theory of Ideas ... They got a great deal of good, no doubt, but no thanks to the University or the Tripos, - thanks rather to the College lecturers, and to the then Greek Professor [i.e. W.H. Thompson].63 There was a time when as an undergraduate he thought all his reading dull and unprofitable, till the Greek Professor taught him that there was something for which the Tripos gave no marks but which yet might be useful in life. Then he became a teacher, a private tutor. The private tutors of the University were looked upon then - as the Sophists were in ancient Greece - as the corrupters of youth. The fact was that as it was shewn that not the Sophists were the corrupters of youth, but the Demos of Athens, so not the private tutors but the Tripos corrupted the youth of Cambridge ... That was the old state of things. They owed the change to Mr Burn and Mr W.G. Clark, and whatever of further change might have become necessary, they could never be sufficiently grateful for what was then done.’64 It was all over bar the voting. Only Regulation 9 for Part I was rejected by the Senate at a ballot on 8 May: ‘that the names of those persons who pass the Examination with credit shall be placed in three Classes. The First and Second Classes shall be divided severally into two subdivisions, (a) and (b), the names in each subdivision being arranged alphabetically. The Examiners shall however have power to omit (a) retaining (b), or to omit (b) retaining (a), if they see cause for so doing. The Third Class shall be arranged alphabetically.’ It was all just too radical. The Classical Board met the very next day and agreed the following revised formulation (crucially different, as you will instantly spot):65 ‘That the names of those who pass the Examination with credit, shall 63 Trinity, Fourth Classic 1832, Regius Professor of Greek 1853-67, M aster 1866-86, died 1886 ( ‘at his L odge’: Venn (1940-54)). 64 CUR, 1 April 1879, 495-6. A speech which shows Jackson at his most (outrageously) expedient. In fact, he him self (together with W .E. ( ‘Pat’) Currey, fourth Classic 1863) was instrum ental in the end of private coaching and the developm ent of the college supervision system; see Rothblatt (1968) 216-17 and Parry (1926) 19 (quoting Jackson’s Commonplace Book, 18 April 1914: ‘In a word we superseded classical coaching’). For Grote and Cambridge classics, see Stray (1997b). 65 If you don’t, then read the discussion in CUR, 1 April 1879, 493-9; 27 May 1879, 647-49.

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be placed in three classes; each class to consist of one or more divisions, of which each division shall contain one or more names. The names in each division shall be arranged in alphabetical order.’ That would do. Then it was all over, or so it must have seemed. Heroic days. T hat I have lived to see the Classical Tripos remodelled ... and that I have been allowed to take part in that work is very gratifying’, wrote Kennedy in a flysheet in 1879.66 In fact he lived for another ten years. When he died in 1889 Jebb, not Jackson, was elected to his chair.

SECTION C: the origins ofD Archaeology was, as we have seen, to form one of the five Sections of the examination for the new Part II. Following the pattern of the other Sections, it comprised four main papers: (1) Paper on the history of art, and the lives and works of artists in the ancient Greek and Roman world. (2) Paper on (7E) the mythologies and religious beliefs, and ( ) the religious usages and ceremonies, of the ancient Greeks and Romans. (3) Paper either on a special class or group of monuments, or on the chorography, topography, and monuments of a special site or district (AE) of the ancient Greek world, and ( ) of the ancient Roman world, such subject or subjects to be defined from time to time by the Board of Classical Studies. (4) Paper on the art and handicraft, and the inscriptions, of the ancient Greeks and Romans, in relation to their domestic and national life. Plus, in a slightly different format, an essay paper: (5) Paper containing a number of alternative subjects for an English Essay. The subjects shall be so chosen as fairly to represent the several departments of the section. The whole Section was emphatically visual and literary. Questions were set that included passages for translation and comment from the ‘ancient authorities’ (plenty of Pausanias and Pliny here, in a whole schedule of set texts), as well as practical exercises in the identification of coins (from drawings, or electrotypes apparently distributed in the exam room) and sculpture, architecture and vase-painting (from photographs); line drawings of inscriptions were to be transcribed, interpreted and explained. 66 18 March 1879.

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A fully-fledged, bonaofide, (formally at least) equal partner with philosophy, history and philology. But where did the idea of archaeology come from? Who was so keen to see it in the new Tripos? And who was to teach it once it was there? This is, in fact, all something of a mystery. For reasons that are themselves no doubt significant, the published accounts of decisions and discussions barely help us to answer those questions; and inevitably even the best answers are based to a very large extent on the best guess. Philosophy, history and philology had long had their advocates: from 1866, as we have seen, there had been those who spoke loudly and wrote at length about the importance of including each of these sub-disciplines in (or excluding them from) the Tripos; there were plenty of men in town who felt qualified to teach them (and presumably, whether formally or informally, already did). But the claims of archaeology were simply not mentioned in the wave of discussions that followed the memorial of Clark and Bum. And when Kennedy issues his flysheet in response to the instant howls of protest that greeted the ‘Intermediate Tripos’, his passing reference to archaeology hardly suggests that it was yet a major contender for serious attention: ‘Archaeology could have been added, but it might, perhaps better, be provided for by questions in the Translation and History papers.’67 Take it or leave it. It is only in the debates around the 1879 reforms that the virtues or otherwise of archaeology as a part of classics are brought into the picture. T.E. Page (predictably) saw it as a clear proof of the collapse of scholarship that no distinction could be gained from verse composition in the new Part II - ‘in an examination in which high distinction may be obtained for a knowledge of chorography and topography, of Italian dialects, and the Corpuso inscriptionum!'.68 Others, more judiciously, wondered whether the Tripos was quite the right place for it (‘Its recognition in some form is clearly necessary; but I should have ventured to think prizes, scholarships and provision for travelling would have been the better form’);69 whether it would become a refuge for the thirdclass men, who couldn’t translate;70 or whether it was a feasible subject for examination (‘There were books enough on archaeology, those on the archaeology of Rome alone being almost endless, but they were not suitable for examination purposes, for men ought to go to the places where the remains described in them were to be found.’71) Nonetheless archaeology had become ‘clearly necessary’, and it entered the Tripos with a minimum of huffing and puffing. So who was behind it? A few hints come from the responses to a questionnaire circulated around the University (to Boards of Studies and to particular individuals) by 67 n.d. (M ay/June 1873). 68 For P age’s later attem pts to stamp out the teaching of classical archaeology in schools, see Stray (1997b) 368; (1998a) ch. 8. 69 E.C. Clark, Letter, Tim es, 25 March 1879; in the rest of this letter, Clark was still arguing that the specialist (classical) sub-disciplines best belonged in other Triposes. 70 A.A. Vansittart, CUR, 1 April 1879, 493: ‘He objected to the regulation which allowed the third-class men to enter for Part II; men who could not even translate well would present them selves for A rchaeology.’ 71 J.B. Pearson, CUR 1April 1879, 497.

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the syndicate appointed to investigate future developments in the University;72 it included questions on long- and medium-term planning, on the relationship between college and University teaching, and on new needs (in terms of posts and equipment).73 The Classical Board was brilliantly careful in its reply. Overall, they said, they could just about manage with the thirty-eight professors and (college, intercollegiate and public) lecturers then in post - especially if they were to streamline some of their resouces ('Though the teaching at present ... cannot be said to be inefficient, we are nevertheless of the opinion that by more careful organisation it may be improved.. .).74 That was not to say, of course, that they were not worried about the way that research time was getting eroded by teaching and administration ('the teachers are in too many cases compelled to sacrifice their private studies to their educational and other public duties’). Nor was it to say that they had no plans for future developments. In fact they had a long list of desiderata, which prominently included the resources for art history and archaeology: ‘Rooms for the professors, and a collection of maps, plans, models, electrotypes, photographs of sites, of manuscripts and inscriptions, etc., for the use of the professors and lecturers are urgently needed. We also think it desirable to render the collections of ancient coins and other objects of ancient art in the Fitzwilliam Museum more complete for purposes of education and study by the addition of elec­ trotypes and copies, and also more accessible to students. Further it would be an advantage if lectures on the collections were occasionally given.’75 And when they turned to think of new posts (although ‘we are not prepared to recommend any one branch of classical study as especially worthy to be endowed by the establishment of a Professorial Chair in the University to the exclusion of the rest’; this was a time to pull together, after all), their list of potential new ‘professorial subjects’ included a number that in a few years time were to find their home in Section D: ‘Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Roman Law, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Ancient Religion and Mythologies, Byzantine and Modem Greek, Late Latin, Palaeography and Inscriptions’ (not to mention ‘Romance, Celtic, Teutonic, Sclavonic [sic] Languages’, plus a chair in Comparative Philology). But among the other replies to the syndicate’s questionnaire is a letter from Sidney Colvin,76 with a much more impassioned plea for the teaching of classical art and archaeology at Cambridge, under the umbrella of the Classical Faculty. Colvin was Slade Professor of Art between 1873 and 1885 (and regularly gave his lectures on 72 Itself one of the University responses to the threat of (more drastic) outside interference; see above, n. 18. 73 ‘(1) W hat additional Teachers, or appliances for teaching, are required in the different departm ents of University study ... (4) How the teaching in the University may be organised so as to give the greatest encouragem ent to the advancement o f the several branches of learning’ (CUR, 17 March 1876, 303-4). 74 In particular they recom m ended the form ation of consortia of colleges ‘with a view to the dim inution of the num erous courses o f lectures at present delivered in the subjects of the ordinary exam inations’ and a reduction in the num bers of ‘honour lectures of a purely classical character’. 75 And, for good measure - ‘with a view to recognising the close connexion between Archaeology and Classical Studies’ - why not have the Professor of Archaeology on the Classical Board? 76 Trinity, Third Classic 1867, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British M useum, died 1927.

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classical topics), Director of the Fitzwilliam between 1876 and 1884 and the leading light behind the collection of casts that were to form the Museum of Classical Archaeology.77 His reply in 1875 suggests that he played an even bigger part in promoting archaeology at Cambridge than his role in the foundation of the ‘Ark’ implies. He laid out a long and detailed case for four branches of T he Historical Study of the Fine Arts’: ‘ 1. Prae-historic and primitive; 2. Biblical and Oriental; 3. Greek and Roman; 4. Mediaeval and Modern.’ The most ‘pressing urgency’ was in Greek and Roman: ‘There is no branch of study in which [monuments] are so much needed to supplement, illustrate, and give life to [books] as in the study of Greek and Roman antiquity. Until very recently, the works of fine art, in which a full half of the spiritual activity of the ancients was put forth, have been practically ignored as a means of University education in England ... In time, I think it would even be desirable to give art and archaeology a place in the regular curriculum of classical studies - so far at any rate as to set up one or more archaeology papers, which a candidate in the honour exam­ ination might take up, by way of alternative, in lieu of some other paper or papers. But without pleading prematurely for changes of this kind, T hold it urgent that every possible encouragement should be given, both in the form of “teaching” and “appliances”, to those students who might choose ... to take up the study of classical antiquities.’ What he meant was: one professor plus an appropriate collection of works of art and reproductions (including a gallery of casts, estimated cost £9000). Colvin was a powerful advocate for archaeology; and he had powerful friends in Cambridge (and London), many of whom were deeply involved in the framing of the 1879 Tripos and in the debates before and around it: he had known Jebb since he was an undergraduate at Trinity in the 1860s, likewise W.G. Clark and Henry Sidgwick; and from 1869 he was a member of the ‘New Club’ (the later ‘Savile’) with Jebb, Sidgwick and Oscar Browning78 (whose part in this story of art we shall soon discover), among others. No doubt Colvin’s persuasive after-dinner rhetoric did much to get archaeology onto the agenda for reform. No doubt; but from the course of the published discussion that now survives we can only guess. We may also guess that the series of high-profile archaeological discoveries in the Mediterranean over the 1870s (at Troy, Mycenae and Olympia) made it seem all the more plausible that archaeology was to be a major element in the future of classical studies. Schliemann himself had visited London in 1877, with a memorable lecture on Troy to the Society of Antiquaries. Jebb, meanwhile, visited Athens in 1878 and came back to England to write a letter to The Times, urging the foundation of British Schools in Athens and Rome - so that Britain would not get left behind in the race for archaeological glory. Maybe by the late 1870s the claims of archaeology seemed so self-evident, so well-established, that they were never debated in the formal University occasions - beyond, as we have seen, the few well-practised 77 See Beard (1993). 78 K ing’s, Fourth Classic 1860, Assistant M aster, Eton 1860-75 (sacked), University Lecturer in History 1883-1909, Founder of the Cambridge Review, died 1923. ‘Absurd, profound and, above all, hum an’ wrote Lowes Dickinson (absurdly) in the Cambridge Review, 20 May 1927.

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complaints about its suitability for an undergraduate from the usual philological suspects.79 The next episode in the story looks even more mysterious. Those who framed the Tripos seem to have adopted that familiar university political tactic: first get your new examination syllabus ratified, then fix up the teaching second (if necessary, using ‘student demand’ to extract money from somewhere for a new post). There were, it is true, a few men in town who could teach something relevant to Section D: Robert Burn worked on the archaeology of Rome; he might have put the pressure on his Trinity colleague, Frazer, to offer something on myth or religion; J.E. Sandys,80 the Public Orator, was keen enough to undertake a ‘field trip’ to the major sites of Greece in 1886 and to publish An Easter vacation in Greece (a strange hybrid of archaeological diary and railway/steamer timetable) on his return;81 Colvin was at the Fitzwilliam, with a whole series (of series) of lectures on Greek art behind him (but also a museum to run). But who was to do the bulk of the teaching?82 As if from nowhere Charles Waldstein (later Sir CharlesWalston) arrives on the scene. Part American, part German, and armed with a degree from the University of Columbia and a Ph.D. in Archaeology from Heidelberg, Waldstein was a man on the make - becoming Director of the Fitzwilliam (1883/4-9, following Colvin), Slade Professor (from 1895-1901; 1904-11) and first Reader in Classical Archaeology (1883-1907). Flamboyant, ‘effervescent’ and to some local residents deeply irritating (‘I wish that German-American-Jew would go back to his respective countries’, Sir Charles Stanford83 is said to have fumed - both offensively and memorably 79 1879 saw the first m eeting of the new Society of the Prom otion o f Hellenic Studies, with Charles Newton (Shrewsbury School, BA Oxford 1837, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British M useum 1861-6, died 1894) in the chair and giving the opening address: ‘Now by Hellenic Sttudies we do not mean merely the study of Greek texts, gram m ars and lexicons ... The monum ents of the Greeks, their architecture, sculpture, and other m aterial remains, deserve our study not less than the texts o f the classics.’ Preaching to the converted we may guess, rather than a loaded and idiosyncratic personal manifesto. At least, the early issues of the JH S gave pride of place to material culture: including Charles W aldstein (who is just about to enter my story, pp. 117-22) writing on ‘Athlete statues’ and Jebb on the history and archaeology of Delos in the first num ber (a prequel to his series of articles on the im plications of Schliem ann’s work, through volumes 2 to 4). See further I. M orris (1996) 108. 80 St John’s, Senior Classic 1867, University Orator 1876-1919, died 1922. 81 Never mind the generic confusion, Sandys (with all the enthusiasm of a trainspotter) knew that transport was the key to success in Greece: ‘But the routes of these steamers ... are imperfectly known to English travellers in Greece. Thus, even so well-inform ed a traveller as Professor M ahaffy ... is content to state that “a coasting steam er calls at Kalam ata every fortnight” ; whereas the Austrian Lloyd steamers stop there twice a fortnight, those of the Panhellenic and Gude com panies four times each, and those of the Old Hellenic eight times, m aking in all eighteen times a fortnight’ (Sandys (1887) ix). The copy of this book (first shown to me by Alastair Blanshard) in the Classics Faculty Library was owned by Frazer, bought on 13 August 1890 - just after his own trip to Greece in spring of that year (a recuperation after com pleting the first Golden bough and preparation for his com m entary on Pausanias). Sandys, along with Jebb, was heavily involved in the British School in Athens. 82 As Jackson was to say later (CUR, 7 June 1881, 661): ‘The University already possessed teachers of archaeology, but the art side of the art and archaeology division of the new Tripos would certainly languish unless special provision were made for it.’ 83 Q ueens’ and Trinity, bottom Classic (i.e. ‘The W edge’) 1874, Professor of M usic 1887-1924, died 1924.

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Figure 18. Charles W aldstein, Reader in Classical Archaeology and Slade Professor of Fine Art.

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at Waldstein’s insufferable displays as trainer of the chorus at one of the Greek plays),84 his most lasting memorials in Cambridge are the collection of casts (in which he collaborated with Colvin), the ‘Walston Studentship’, which bears his (later) name, and the great cast-iron back gates of King’s (which he donated to his college). Waldstein’s formal incorporation into Cambridge is noted in the Reporter for 4 June 1880 as follows: The Board of Classical Studies think that the time has arrived when some steps should be taken for giving systematic instruction in that branch of learning. Professor Colvin shares this opinion and is prepared himself to give a course in the Lent Term on a department of this study. He and several other Members of the Senate who have attended the Lectures on the History of Greek Sculpture given, by permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum Syndicate, by Mr Charles Waldstein Ph.D. of Heidelberg, are anxious that that gentleman should obtain the formal recognition of the University and be induced to continue his labours during the ensuing academical year. A Member of the Senate, who desires to remain anonymous, having placed in the hands of the Master of Trinity the munificent sum of £200 for the remuneration of Dr Waldstein, should he consent to the arrangement, the Board recommend that this proposal be accepted and that Dr Waldstein be authorized to deliver Lectures during the ensuing year, under the supervision of the Board of Classical Studies. Unsurprisingly, Dr Waldstein did ‘consent to the arrangement’; and the following year the Board came back to ask for an extension on his behalf: They think it right ... to say that they would regard Dr Waldstein’s departure from the University at the present time as a serious loss, especially to those under­ graduates who may intend to select Classical Archaeology among the four subjects enumerated in Part II of the Regulations for the Classical Tripos of 1882. They therefore recommend that Dr Waldstein be again authorized to deliver lectures for a period of three years under the supervision of the Board of Classical Studies, and that the sum of two hundred pounds a year, if not a larger sum, be paid to him from the University Chest for so doing. The discussion that followed ranged from the state of the University finances (the case might be a good one, said the Master of Clare - but was this a good time to make such a commitment, as the Barton farm had just lost its tenant?) to the intellectual merits of the appointment. What evidence was there for the success of Waldstein’s lectures and how many undergraduates were going? (A.W. Verrall, who had actually attended, was able to confirm - if rather vaguely - that the numbers were ‘not at all inconsiderable’ 84 Quoted by E.F. Benson (King’s, Classics Part I 1890, First; Part II 1891, First) in his archly offensive memoir As we were (1930) 139; this is followed by an equally nasty account of Waldstein’s display at the ‘earnest and exclusive Literary Society called the Chit-chat’ (139-41).

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and that Waldstein was just ‘the sort of man sure to create an interest in his subject’). Would it not perhaps be better, temporarily, to bring someone down from the British Museum and meanwhile to wait a year or two until they had ‘men o f their own qualified to lecture on such subjects?’ (Absolutely not, retorted Jackson, who ‘took exception to [the] assumption that qualified teachers would spring up spontaneously, and to [the] proposal to rely in the mean time upon occasional courses of lectures delivered by non­ residents ...’) The appointment was confirmed; and Waldstein was never exposed to quite the same public humiliation (almost) again. Against the backdrop of what was fast becoming his Museum of Classical Archaeology with its six-hundred or so plaster casts,85 Waldstein dined, clubbed and lectured his way into the first permanent University Readership in Classical Archaeology. But that still leaves the question of how on earth this complete outsider, aged 24, arrived in Cambridge in the first place, and who his anonymous benefactor was. In this case, it is possible to unearth some answers. First on the anonymous benefactor. The main obituary of Sir Charles Walston in The Times of 23 March 1927 (he had died of pneumonia on a cruise ship in the Bay of Naples) mentioned in passing that he had first gone to Cambridge at the invitation of Henry Bradshaw86 and Henry Sidgwick. The very next day, a short additional note from the Provost of Eton stressed again the role of Bradshaw: ‘One of the things which Sir Charles Walston would most have wished to be recorded about him is that in the early years of his residence at Cambridge, he was greatly befriended by Henry Bradshaw, from whom he learned much and for whom he had an admiration and a reverence which continued undimmed till the end.’ The Provost probably knew more than he let on; because one of the earliest accounts of Bradshaw’s life makes it absolutely clear that he was the member of the Senate who came up with the £200. Even a text of his letter accompanying the donation is preserved: ‘The recognition of archaeology as a definite study in the new re-arrangements of the Classical Tripos make it very desirable that those who take up the study should find a good teacher to aid and direct them in their training ... Nothing, you must well know, could be further from my mind than the least resemblance of dictating to the Board. It was the simple conviction that, if only they could assure themselves of the worth of Dr Waldstein’s work in such a post, they would have no reason to regret the appointment.’87 85 Colvin - the other m ajor figure in the M useum ’s history - was increasingly off the scene: both quite seriously ill and away in Europe chasing casts; he was anyway to leave Cambridge in 1884 to become Keeper o f Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. 86 K ing’s, bracketed tenth in the Second Class 1854, University Librarian 1867- 86 , died 1886. 87 Prothero (1886) 249-51. For careful readers, the identity of W aldstein’s benefactor had been given away in 1885 in the preface to his Essays on the art ofP heidias: ‘But, finally, I must here record my sense of deepest obligation to M r Henry Bradshaw ... who has read the proofs and made most valuable suggestions and corrections throughout, so that I feel that a great part of any merit the book may have is to a large extent due to his counsel ... But in view of the encouragement and moral support which he has bestowed upon me in all phases of my University work, as well as for the loving kindness and friendship which he has shown me for the past five years, I am proud to think that I have an altogether exceptional claim to express my gratitude.’ (p. x) Careful readers will spot that Henry Jackson also took a hand in checking the proofs of this vapid book.

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Bradshaw was at this point in the middle of his long and (according to the official version, at any rate) glorious twenty-year reign as University Librarian;88 he was to die young(ish) in 1886 (‘a disappointed man, unable to hasten the transition of King’s into the modern period’).89 Brilliantly obsessive bibliographer and extremely influential in shaping not only the future of the Library but also the academic agenda of Victorian Cambridge, he had not been a prominent player in the classical disputes of the 1860s and 70s.90There is no overriding reason to distrust (though, I suppose, no overriding reason to trust it either) the view of his biographer that this was a generous and disinterested gesture in support of a cause he believed to be right. But how had Bradshaw come to feel that he wanted to dig generously into his pocket to support Waldstein in particular? How had he met him? Waldstein’s surviving day-book for the end of 1879 allows us to reconstruct something of the story.91 He had come from Paris to London to see Charles Newton92 at the British Museum; Newton had apparently met him before and hinted (or so Waldstein understood him at least) at the possibility of a (teaching) job in London. But, for whatever reason (misunderstanding or change of heart), it did not work out: ‘Newton quite altered ... I now seemed de trop to him & he discouraged me very much. However said he would write to one of my friends at Oxford (Marc Pattison) & see what could be done. Result discouraging. Told me to go to Colvin.’ At first, Colvin seemed to offer equally bad news - apparently suspecting an interloper moving into his patch. ‘Saw Colvin at Trinity. He clearly said to me that he was doing what I wanted to do etc. I was very despondent.’ But somehow Waldstein had other contacts in town: ‘... before leaving called on Henry Sidgwick. Things changed. When my demands were so modest he saw there were prospects for m e...’ A few days later he was in: ‘Was very hospitably received by the Sidgwicks. Fine English wife and home. Intellectual aristocracy - Offer from him to lecture on Greek art during May term, offered his rooms at Trinity & prospect of a permanency at C. 88 The man who took over after the ‘turbulent years’ of J.E.B. M ayor, ‘the Vegetarian Fiihrer’; for M ayor’s detractors the man who got the Library on the straight and narrow again. See M cKitterick (1998) 658-764. There is to be no knocking of Bradshaw: M cK itterick’s eulogy tries to conceal his m ediocre degree under the phrase ‘less successful than had been hoped’ (524); and even Leedham -G reen ((1996) 185) goes weak at the knees when she thinks of the blessings Bradshaw brought the Library. For the M ayor side of the story, Henderson (1998) 116-18. 89 Rothblatt (1968) 226; Bradshaw ’s understated goodwill had in the end been unequal to the task of persuading the men of K ing’s (an intim ate or - depending on your point of view - cliquy college) to tolerate an influx o f non-Etonians. He was fifty-five years old at his nicely com fortable, after-dinner death: a jolly evening ch ez the W illis Clarks, with the Sidgwicks and Henry Jackson am ong the guests and he was found dead in his chair the next morning (Prothero (1886) 321-2. The year before (1885) he had holidayed with Jackson in W hitby - where (during an evening to spare in York) he told Jackson ‘the whole history of his inquiries respecting the “Hisperica Fam ina’” ; ‘Unfortunately, D r Jackson took no notes of this conversation.’ Those were the days. (Prothero (1886) 304.) 90 W hen M om m sen visited Cambridge, he apparently pronounced him self more im pressed by Bradshaw than any other m an in England; ‘he longed for a shorthand writer to take down the inform ation which he poured forth on subjects of com m on interest’ - like meets like (Prothero (1886) 314). 91 I owe these references to W aldstein’s day-book to Chris Stray. 92 Shrewsbury School, BA Oxon 1837.

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One of happiest moments of my life. Evening dinner Colvin ... ’ The day-book ends in January 1880; by that stage Waldstein (whose instincts for advancement rarely let him down) had fallen in with Oscar Browning; and it was presumably through OB - life fellow (and ‘unique institution’) of King’s, party-giver and ‘genius flawed by abysmal fatuity’93 - that he came to the eye of his anonymous benefactor. It was, then, largely chance that washed Waldstein up in Cambridge: an arrangement with Newton that went wrong, a brush-off at Oxford and a dogged determination on his part (we may guess) not to return home without some kind of success to report. But, almost as soon as he had arrived, some people saw that he could fill their awkward gap: Sidgwick prominently - who had a finger in every late-Victorian Cambridge pie (classics included) and was quite prepared to stoop to extravagant promises (‘prospect of a permanency’) that he could not seriously hope to deliver;94 and Colvin too, once he had been convinced that the pushy young foreigner was not after his own job. In fact, of course, his first instincts were right, as any glance at Waldstein’s later career will confirm ... The final mystery in this part of the story concerns the combination of papers prescribed for the new Section D. Why the juxtaposition of (in our sense) ‘technical’ art and archaeology with the history of religion, mythology and domestic life? Was it one of those accidents of drafting? As the fine tuning of the new Tripos was being completed, no one could quite decide where to put ‘religion’. You could hardly leave it out of this new comprehensive Tripos, but in which Section did it belong? And which Section, more to the point, had space for it? We would have no trouble inventing (as we often have, in similar circumstances) the series of clever justifications that slipped it plausibly into D .. ,95 Or was it not a matter of convenience and chance at all? Was the ‘Anthropology’ of the classical world rooted in the heart of ‘Archaeology’, as they had always conceived it: the study of ancient culture (both ‘material’ and not)? It is obviously very tempting to suppose so, and there is plenty of supporting evidence. After all, in the spanking new Museum of Classical Archaeology that was opened in 1884, the classical casts shared houseroom with the ethnographic collection - the shrunken heads and totem-poles carefully curated by Baron von Hiigel; (in Cambridge) ‘Arch-and-Anth’ always have gone together.% Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Convenience and ideology are rarely entirely separate; and, in any case, ‘chance’ decisions regularly become invested with ideo­ logical significance as they are told, explained and lived - as they become, in other 93 Benson (1930) 129. 94 If W aldstein is to be believed, at any rate, But what had Sidgwick actually said? Perhaps only that there would in due course be a perm anent position in the history of art ... that W aldstein would be a more plausible candidate if he offered some lectures now? As with the disappointm ent with Newton, we may suspect that W aldstein was all too ready to hear what he wanted. 95 A fter all, archaeology in Greece was essentially the archaeology of res sacra; temples, altars, sanctuaries and divine images were what Section D was all about ... 96 Not without difficulty and dispute though. The juxtaposition of ethnography and classical casts seemed as awkward as it did natural; soon after the opening of the M useum of Classical Archaeology, an internal wall was constructed specifically to keep the two apart. See Beard (1993) 15.

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words, part of our history. What is more important here is the fact that, however it arose, this particular collocation of religion, material culture and Sittengeschichte took its place, next to philosophy, history and philology as one of the constituent sub-disciplines of classics. And it is against this institutional background, this practice of teaching and learning, that we must set some of the most radical contributions to the ‘anthropology’ of the ancient world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As I stressed in the introduction to this paper, the distinctive combination of myth, ritual and the visual arts that we associate with (more than anyone else) Jane Harrison is a combination rooted in the history of the Tripos.97

SECTION D: Jackson's last stand The new Part II had been brilliantly judged, a blueprint for the future as well as an artfully judicious compromise between the different interest groups: let many flowers bloom and let that be classics. The problem was that not enough undergraduates actually wanted to take it: there were just two candidates in 1882; and, although the slow start was followed by a temporary surge (26 men and two women in 1883;98 18 men in 1884), by the mid ’nineties they were only just struggling into double figures again (ten men and two women in 1893, the same in 1894) - compared with well over a hundred taking Part I. Inevitably the number taking each of the groups was tiny: ‘as regards the average number of candidates for each of the Sections, A, B, C, D and E , in the four years 1893-6 [A was made optional in 1895], they found that it ranged from an average of less than two candidates in Section D, Classical Archaeology, to an average of more than four, but less than five, in Section C, Ancient History’;99 ‘in the last two years’, reported J.P. Postgate100 in 1900, ‘the number of students who took the Philology section of Part II had been zero.’ Of course, there was no shortage of arguments that popular demand was not a good test of quality. But underneath they knew (as we do), that a Tripos needed students. There was an easy solution. If Part I on its own did not qualify a candidate for an honours degree, then the men would have to take Part II (or a Part of another Tripos). And this was the decision taken (out of the now predictable combination of outside University pressure and internal Faculty discontent) in 1918: in a reform of widerranging significance, Part II was ‘rescued’ by the simple expedient offorcing the under97 See Beard (2000). 98 This total was never reached again until the next century. 99 R. Jebb, CUR, 15 Novem ber 1898, 239; Jebb also gives the num ber those taking Part II as a percentage o f those taking Part I - 1882-92 about 19%; 1893-6 12%; for 1898 (according to Postgate, CUR, 22 May 1900, 911) it was 13%, and for 1899, 6%. 100 Trinity, Eighth Classic 1876, Professor of Com parative Philology at University College London 1880-1909, Professor o f Latin at Liverpool 1909-20, fixer, died 1920 ( ‘as the result of a collision between his bicycle and a steam wagon in Trum pington R oad’: Venn (1940-54)).

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graduates to take it. Instrumental once again, though nearly 80, was Henry Jackson; it was Jackson’s last stand.101 The almost forty years between 1879 and 1918 had seen repeated bouts of attempted change to the Tripos, almost all of them unsuccessful. I shall them review them briefly here: amidst further and repeated discussion of issues inherited from the 1860s (the value of verse composition; the vices of ‘cramming’) we shall find some new tunes; we shall also discover how very differently ‘our’ Tripos might have turned out - if the Classical Board of 1898 had had its way, classics (like mathematics) would have had a Part III to add to its Parts I and II. The fears that men who read for Part II would need their ‘scholarship’ kept up to scratch - hence the compulsory Section A (proses and translations) - soon enough seemed groundless. So the first reform of the new Tripos (in 1892) was to start the process which defined A not as ‘scholarship’, but as ‘literature’: it was no longer to be compulsory for candidates taking Part II (any one or two Sections would now do); and although it still included more or less the same translation papers as before, papers on Greek and Latin language and literature were now added, as well as on textual criticism (removed from its original home in Section E). This change seems to have been uncontroversial - as were some alterations to the balance and content of other Sections in Part II (the significance of those affecting Section D, I shall turn to below). But attempts made at the same time to add an extra ‘content’ paper (on literature and philosophy) to Part I, as well as widening the scope of the history paper to include questions on archaeology, got nowhere. When the final report was produced by the Board, almost half the members (including Jebb and J.E.B. Mayor) signalled next to their signatures specific objections to the proposals for Part I; and the discussion in the Senate produced many of the old arguments all over again (if with an occasionally more fin-de-siecle style). The idea was that ‘candidates for Part I may be further encouraged to study elements of subjects included in Part II’.102 But, objected Archer-Hind,103 ‘Tripos candidates were neither boobies nor babies to require to be told by signposts “This way lies an interesting subject”. A further serious objection was that the subjects could not be adequately examined within the prescribed limits. He would not refer to archaeology, and if he was told that half a paper could afford a satisfactory test of a man’s knowledge on that vast subject, he would say credat Judaeus and pass on’. Even Jackson found himself in two minds: ‘he was not altogether favourably disposed towards this part of the Report. He had had experience in teaching his subject to junior 101 He had a splendid Trinity celebration for his eightieth birthday in 1919. Increasingly blind, he became confined to his college room s - with occasional visits to his wife and fam ily hom e in Bournem outh (it was a long-distance marriage); he died in Bournem outh in 1921 and was buried in St G iles’ Cemetery, Cambridge - shortly to be joined by Sandys in the adjoining plot; his (wonderfully appropriate) tomb motto is ‘Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory’ - neatly enlisting the Almighty in Tripos reform, from beyond the grave. See Parry (1926) 114-16. 102 CUR, 11 October 1892, 47. 103 Shrewsbury School, Trinity, Third Classic 1872, died 1910; you will find him in Venn (1940-54) under ‘Hodgson’, a surname he discarded in 1869; CUR, 8 Novem ber 1892, 162.

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men, and had doled out his “miserable compendium” to first and second year men and found them glad to get some rudimentary notions of Philosophy at that early stage ... He had thought that attendance at such a course should be voluntary, but he had been induced to sign the Report because lecturers on other subjects took the opposite view ... He was uncertain how he should vote on the question; he had all along been in a state of hesitancy about it.’104 Hardly surprising then that the proposals didn’t romp home. Hardly surprising either, though, that the general sense that the new Tripos was not quite right did not go away. Paradoxically, although those who favoured extending the examination beyond the confines of language and philology had (in some respects) ‘got their way’ in 1879, they had ended up with the vast majority of students taking a degree (i.e. Part I) which was comprised of a narrower and more exclusively linguistic range of options than the ‘Intermediate Tripos’. True, there were exciting and wide-ranging specialisms for those who stayed to do Part II; but most students took a Tripos which was closer to the Old Tripos (before Clark and Burn came on the scene) than even T.E. Page would have dared to hope. You didn’t need to be Henry Jackson to see the problem. In 1898 the Board came up with an extremely clever plan. You can practically read their own sense of smartness in their Report of 7 June:105 they have been ‘aware of a widespread feeling of dissatisfaction with regard to the working of the Classical Tripos’; they have done the right thing and consulted widely (questionnaires around the Faculty, letters to schoolmasters ...); and now ‘after careful consideration of the evidence received’, they’ve come up with this simply brilliant idea. ‘They propose that henceforth the Tripos should be divided into three parts’: Part I to remain unchanged (except that it would not, on its own, qualify for a degree); Part II to remain unchanged in content, but to become the new Part III (‘for those who desire to pursue the special study of certain branches of classical learning’); and a new Part II ‘of a more general character ... in which the different sides of classical life and thought should be studied in connexion with the original authors.’ The new Part II was to consist in eight papers: two composition exams, a paper on a philosophical set book, two papers on history (one general, one on two set periods); two papers on literature, philosophy and art (‘the papers to be so arranged that candidates need not attempt questions on more than two of these subjects’); and an essay paper. The idea was that a candidate would take Part I, followed by either Part II or Part III (unless they were real mugs - in which case, they could do Part I, followed by Part II and Part III). It becomes clear from the discussion106 that this scheme was Jebb’s baby. (Strikingly, Jackson - though Chairman of the Board and the author of a supportive flysheet - did not speak in the discussion in the Senate; maybe he was out of town, sick 104 CUR, 8 Novem ber 1892, 163. 105 N otw ithstanding the fact that three of the members could not bring them selves to sign all the recommendations. 106 CUR, 15 N ovem ber 1898, 239^16; 28 Novem ber 1898, 284-98.

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or whatever; maybe he secretly had his reservations.) He opened with a very long speech, charting the history of the new Tripos and the central reason for dissatisfaction with it ( ‘Part II was an excellent examination for some picked men ... but too technical for the average classical man.’), and reading out the full details of the new Part II. There were a few cheers (‘a scheme ... likely to settle the vexed question of classical education in the University for some considerable time’) - but not many; in fact so many people wanted to speak against the scheme (for all kinds of different reasons) that the meeting had to be adjourned to another day (and even then a strict guillotine imposed). Some harked back to old wounds (‘The main objection to the proposal was that no option was allowed for the study of Pure Classics ... The Tripos would become known as a smattering Tripos ... sufficient for the writer of newspaper articles, but it would not produce a result worthy of the University’107). Others put new concerns on the map: for Sidgwick, the new Part II looked rather like Oxford Greats - only not as good; ‘he was afraid that it would be a refuge for the weaker men’;108 for Peile, it was the requirements of the Civil Service Examination that seemed to be leading the way quite contrary to the principles and ideals of a University education;109 Archer-Hind on the other hand (who boasted of finding the scheme ‘unworkable, educationally worthless and totally unnecessary’) thought ‘the proposal to restrict Part I to the second year ... one of the most vicious points in this radically vicious proposal.’ ‘They had heard a great deal’, he said, ‘about people who came up so well prepared that they really could take their first part at the end of their first or second year ... For his part he did not know where these ready-made Porsons went to; certainly few of them came to Trinity... ’ Most of the undergraduates needed the third year for Part I; only then were their minds ‘sufficiently ripened to deal with their subjects adequately’. This was the newer rhetoric of inter-university rivalry, professional qualifications and burgeoning educational theory; and it was all (or most of it) saying no thanks to Jebb’s scheme. The Board came back the next year, accepting ‘the force of the objection urged against the nominal division of the Tripos into three Parts’. They proposed instead a new Part I (now with twelve papers: four compositions; five translations; a History paper; a grammar paper and a general essay) and a new Part II (the existing schedule plus a new Section G for General, which was to comprise compositions and a bit of philosophy, literature and history, plus an essay paper; just right for the ‘average man’). Crucially, Part I on its own was no longer to qualify for an honours degree.110This met almost the same fate as the previous attempt: a few of the minor regulations were approved and the broad outlines for Part I. So they were back the next year, this time 107 J.E. Nixon (K ing’s, Sixth Classic 1863, Lecturer at K ing’s College, London 1871-4, Dean of King’s Cambridge 1 8 7 3-83,1885-9, Gresham Professor of Rhetoric 1881-1914, died 1916) CUR, 15 Novem ber 1898, 243. ‘He was, we may as well face it, just im possible . . . ’ (Henderson (1998) 24); his major legacy to the world was King’s College Choir School (of which he was an enthusiatic founder/patron). 108 CUR, 15 Novem ber 1898, 244. 109 C hrist’s, (bracketed) Senior Classic 1860, Reader in Com parative Philology 1884-91, M aster of C hrist’s 1887-1910, died 1910; CUR, 15 Novem ber 1898, 241. 110 CUR, 21 February 1899, 555-62.

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leaving well alone in Part II (They do not contemplate any changes of principle in Part II of the Tripos’), but with a new scheme as a matter of urgency in Part I (They are still of the opinion that the need of change ... is grave and urgent’).111 By this time they had convinced themselves that Part I had to become fifteen papers long: four compositions; five translations; syntax and historical linguistics; passages for translation and comment on history and antiquities; general history; passages for translation and comment on philosophy, history and art; essay paper on a philosophy set text, Greek and Roman literature and Greek and Roman art; and to round it all off an essay paper. This time no mention of Part I not being a sufficient qualification for a degree on its own. In the discussion Jebb went into bat first again, followed by Jackson, who justified the study of philosophy in Part I as if there was no tomorrow (‘For most men the subject was an interesting one. One saw the growth of thought in a peculiarly interesting people at a peculiarly interesting time, when the growth was so rapid that it was possible to see it, when the process of thought was more like the growth of the mango in the Indian juggling trick than anything else. This was what seemed to him the really interesting thing in Greek history. And it was especially conspicuous when one studied their meta­ physical speculations’); and rounded off his performance with a (self-ironising?) appeal to classical unanimity (They were a very happy family, and it was rather painful when in matters of this sort there was any kind of disagreement’).112The usual suspects made the usual objections (‘Mr Nixon said that ... he thought it retrograde to substitute subjects which encouraged the faculty of memory rather than that of thought’; ‘Dr Mayo113 said, in the course of some remarks on the complaints alleged against those who took down their Tripos learning to the provincial grammar schools, that the existing Classical Tripos Examination had been described as a linguistic examination only; he thought there was a tendency to make it an examination in English’114). But as (the mad) Mayo himself said: ‘there was no disallowing of the degree contemplated’; and the proposals were carried in principle. There was another round of discussion when the detailed regulations were published (and some final laments for the passing of Pure Scholarship: ‘the papers of questions ... were really the booksellers’ joy. They promoted the sale of very expensive books written in English, but they served no other purpose whatsoever. They hindered far more than they advanced sound scholarship’);115 but it was effectively a fait accompli and 1903 saw this new, vastly inflated Part I being sat for the first time. Which left Part II. Fingers were presumably still too burnt from the last time. So in 1901 they contented themselves with some minor changes: the most significant was to III CUR, 1 May 1900,763-65. 112 CUR, 22 May 1900, 907-8. 113 Trinity, Top of the Third Class 1862, professional speaker in the Senate House, died 1920. It is hard to tell whether Mayo was more or less than simply bonkers. His DD thesis was rejected by the exam iners but given an LL D instead; ‘one curious failing was to sit year after year for Special Exam inations in which he invariably gained First C lasses’ (Venn (1940-54).) 114 CUR, 22 May 1900, 909. 115 CUR, 27 Novem ber 1900, 267.

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remove composition and translation from Section A (which thus became more obviously literary: T h e Board hoped by their proposals to make the Section more attractive to students interested in literary criticism and the history of literature rather than in textual criticism’).116The complaints were only a whimper117 and this (slightly) new Part II was examined for the first time in 1904. They did not return with any new proposals for Part II until 1918. Meanwhile in the years before the outbreak of war, the Board was busy fine-tuning its unwieldy Part I. Unable to find enough passages for translation and comment on art, they substitute questions (‘some of which ... shall contain passages for translation and comment’);118 concerned that ‘the study and teaching of Literature may not hold that position of importance which it ought to have in a classical curriculum’, they attempt to replace the paper on syntax with a paper on Greek and Latin Literature,119 but are roundly shouted down in the discussion.120 They come back in 1911 with a different proposal, this time for reducing (by one) the number of papers in Part I: the nine papers in composition and translation remained, but (largely by the abolition of the paper in syntax and historical linguistics) the ‘content’ papers were reduced to five. There were howls of protest again; but it is a mark of how things had changed, that these were mostly directed at the continuing of compulsory verse composition: ‘There was one crowning blot on the proposals of the Board. He observed that Latin and Greek Verse Composition were still continued. His charge was not that they were continued, because he would like them to be continued, but that they were continued without any alter­ natives’; ‘Dr Ridgeway said that there were two main reasons why he had not signed the report. One was that he could not possibly agree to a continuation of Verse Composition in the Tripos’.121 So the Board retuned, with a sixteen-paper Part I, of which candidates had to take any fourteen papers. This enabled them to omit the two verse composition papers; but if so they would be compelled to take the (reinstated) syntax papers, in both Greek and Latin, now augmented by some questions on metre and prosody.122 T.R. Glover123 objected to this proposal on the principle familiar to us: that it would destroy the teaching of verse composition in schools (‘he thought of another type of school altogether, where with great difficulty classics held their own, and where when the chance offered itself - not by the action of the teachers, but by that 116 Jebb, CUR 28 May 1901,940. 117 Partly directed at the proposal to remove Political Philosophy from Section C and to set Greek and Roman Law in alternate years (Ridgeway (TCD and Caius, Fifth Classic 1880, Disney Professor of Archaeology 1892-1926, died 1926), CUR, 28 May 1901, 940). 118 CUR, 4 Decem ber 1906, 307. 119 CUR, 17 M arch 1908, 710-11. 120 CUR, 26 May 1908, 975-83. 121 CUR, 6 February 1912, 586; the first quotation is from E.S. Roberts, the M aster of Caius (Sixth Classic 1869, University Lecturer in Classics (Epigraphy and Dialects) 1883-1906, Vice-Chancellor 1906-8, still going strong in February 1912, died a few months later). 122 CUR, 21 May 1912, 1036-9. 123 St John’s, Part I 1891, First Class; Part II 1892, First Class, O rator 1920-39, Professor of Latin, Kingston (Canada) 1896-1901, died 1943.

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of the County Councils - Verse would be dropped altogether’);124 the proposals were forced to a vote, but carried 55 to 44.125 The moment for major reform of both Part I and Part II came at the very end of the war. With the excuse that the University itself was now demanding that they consider whether Part I should be sufficient for a Cambridge BA, the troopers left in Cambridge (as opposed to those still on the front) made a show of consultation (which even they appear to admit was a fairly cosmetic gesture) and framed new regulations for both parts of the Tripos, on the assumption that Part I ‘shall not qualify for a degree’. Part I (reduced to eleven papers to be chosen out of a schedule of fifteen) was now to be ‘an examination in language and literature’; verse composition was to be optional - and in its place candidates could take either a paper in the history of Greek or Latin, or a paper on a verse set book. Apart from that all the papers were either composition or passages for translation (sometimes with comment). Part II was then framed with the needs of the majority of candidates in mind. All of them would take five compulsory papers (on Literature, Philosophy, Greek History, Roman History and an English Essay); for the rest of their papers, the special sections would remain (but be renamed Groups) - and would now consist of only two papers to be sat. Each candidate would take either one or two Groups and would be vivaed on their Group papers; the dissertation option was abolished.126 In the discussion,127 there were this time no fulminations about Pure Scholarship and the importance (or unimportance) of Verses. There were instead a few very twentieth-century worries about the function of the viva (‘there was no indication of the relation of this to the paper examination’) and some forward-looking fantasy of continuous assessment (‘it seemed to him that it would be a far more satisfactory attestation of good quality in first-class candidates if they had some kind of testamur ... from their head of department, which should testify that they had really done a quantity of work under his direction, and had really thrown themselves into it and profited by it’).128 Jackson did not speak.129

SECTION E: Exit religion ... It was in the course of these reforms that the character of Section D was radically changed: what had started in 1879 as that distinctive combination of religion, material culture and Sittengeschichte had become by 1918 the course in art and archaeology with which we are familiar, or at least its direct ancestor. (Though quite how easily the 124 CUR, 5 Novem ber 1912, 221. 125 CUR, 3 Decem ber 1912, 341. 126 CUR, 5 M arch 1918, 500-10. 127 CUR, 28 M arch 1918, 548-51. 128 W.E. Heitland (S tJ o h n ’s, Senior Classic 1 8 7 1 ,died 1935) CUR, 28 M arch 1918, 549-50. 129 The proposals were passed with only m inor technical amendments.

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reformers of the early twentieth century would have recognised the ‘New Cambridge Classical Archaeology’ of the late twentieth century is another matter - and a story for another time.) It all started in 1892, when the first minor reforms of the new Tripos altered the balance of papers in D: the paper in the history of art became redefined as the history of sculpture; the old Paper 3 (on special sites) now incorporated the history of architecture as well as questions on a special site or class of objects (and it was renumbered Paper 2); the new Paper 3 combined religion, myth and domestic antiquities; Paper 4 now became exclusively concerned with art and material culture, comprising painting, minor arts and inscriptions. Essentially, where previously myth, religion and domestic life had spread into two papers, they were now reduced to one.130 The significance of this was not lost on A.W. Verrall, who in the discussion objected to this new weighting: ‘it seemed to him that there was a disproportion between the extent of the subject assigned to Paper (1) and that of those assigned to Paper (3); the latter were immense subjects, especially if studied as they ought to be by the light of Comparative Anthropology, while the subject of Paper (1) was limited by the amount of material accessible: it was not a sufficiently large subject for a whole paper in proportion, and if it were reduced, room might advantageously be occupied by part of Paper (3).’131 That is about the clearest indication we have that some of the participants at the time (and Verrall had been a member of the Board when the 1879 Tripos was framed) saw an intel­ lectual and ideological significance in the particular collocation of Section D. But his speech was too little too late; the tide was turning. Jackson replied simply ‘that as the University possessed an excellent teacher of the subject of Paper (1) it was right that, for that reason, weight should be given to the subject in the examination.’ The reforms of 1918 completed the process. In the new slimmed down version of what was now Group D, candidates had to choose two out of: (1) a paper on sculpture and architecture; (2) a paper on the antiquities and cults of a special site; (3) a paper on coins, gems, Greek vases, and painting.132 So what happened to religion? A faint trace of it remained in Paper (2) on the ‘cults’ of the special site (though this paper was itself abolished in 1924);133 it was transferred (again temporarily) into the papers for the Diploma in Classical Archaeology (devised as a postgraduate qualification in 1920 to replace the specialist test in archaeology that had been lost in the 1918 reforms).134 But its 130 CUR, 11 October 1892, 51. 131 CUR, 8 N ovem ber 1892, 164. V errall’s enthusiasm for com parative anthropology (in the context of Section D) is hardly surprising. He was, don’t forget, a friend of Jane Harrison ( ‘even after he became a sufferer from arthritis, [he] used to ride abroad on his tricycle, accom panied by Jane, “his beloved squeal” re-echoing in Sidgwick A venue’, Stewart (1959), 56; playing gooseberry, presum ably, during these trips was Mrs Verrall - aka M argaret M errifield, who beat Harrison to the classical lectureship in Newnham in 1879 and later translated Pausanias I for H arrison’s M ythology and monuments o f ancient Athens (1890)). The trio went back a long way: Verrall had ‘coached’ Harrison and M errifield when they were undergraduates at Newnham (some coaching: ‘as soon as the Fellow s’ Marriage Act allowed it [Merrifield] becam e Mrs Verrall, and they settled down two years later in 5, Selwyn Gardens for the rest of their lives’ (Stewart (1959) 55). 132 CUR, 5 M arch 1918, 509. 133 CUR, 20 May 1924, 1039. 134 CUR, 27 January 1920, 554-5.

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only lasting resting-place was in Philosophy: when the general paper in philosophy was established in the new Part II of 1918, the regulations specifically stated that ‘the inclusion of non-philosophical writers will allow questions on the History of Religion to be set’. A shift of convenience no doubt; but if you had ever wondered why it was that in ‘our’ Tripos ‘Religion’ is regularly grouped with ‘Philosophy’, this is presumably one answer. But who was behind this shift of emphasis? Again there is so little discussion of the change that we cannot know for certain, but Jackson’ s reply to Verrall gives a clear enough hint: Waldstein himself. His own essentially Germanic version of art history and archaeology had little in common with the way Section D had originally been defined. Waldstein wrote about the glory of Pheidias,135 not about comparative mythology and bull-roarers. Paradoxically the very man whom serendipity had brought them to teach their new and understaffed archaeology Section was very likely the one who gradually (by default, if not by overt campaign) undermined the intellectual foun­ dations on which the Section had been built. And Waldstein’s vision quickly became the official version. When A.B. Cook came to give his inaugural lecture as Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology in 1931, he took as his theme ‘The rise and progress of classical archaeology, with special reference to the University of Cambridge’. There was no sign here of Frazer, the ‘Ritualists’ or the union of material culture and anthropology. Cook’s genealogy of his subject went back through Walston and Colvin to the travellers and antiquaries of the eighteenth century - and ultimately to the quat­ trocento: ‘Classical Archaeology as we understand the term (and I will not be inveigled into defining it) was a product of the Italian Renaissance.’ 136 It’s probably a coincidence, but Jane Harrison left Cambridge only a couple of years after the new 1918 Part II had been first examined.137

SECTION F Reader, this is here to remind you of the brief history of Group F, Roman Law. Established in 1967, to replace the defunct Diploma in Roman Law (for which there had never been a single candidate), it was abolished in 1983, in an exercise of down­ sizing (‘pruning’) and modernisation.138

135 W aldstein’s Essays on the art o f Pheidias (1885) opens with a chapter on the theory and methods of archaeology, which, in its obsession with casts, ideal forms, com position and provenance, leaves hardly a paragraph for culture and religion (p. 19: ‘Finally, their religion, which no doubt to a great extent took its particular form from the natural predisposition of the race, reacted upon their faculties of observation through its rites and its beautiful sacred im ages.’ Anthropology, where were you?) 136 Cook (1931). W aldstein is dam ned with faint praise: ‘His judgem ents were subjective, but commonly sound ... prolix, polysyllabic, on occasion plethoric, but always persuasive and not seldom convincing ... undeniably a help to his generation.’ (51-2). 137 The usual story is that she had by this point turned m ost of her intellectual energies to Russia. True maybe; but there was certainly not much left in Cambridge for her to teach. 138 CUR, 8 February 1967, 927-9; abolished: CUR, 25 January 1984, 273-8.

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SECTION G See above, p. 126.

GROUP X: bringingoitoallobackohome ... The history of invention is more often than not the history of re-invention. Almost seventy years after Henry Jackson finished his work on the Tripos, there was another round of radical reforms to Part II. The 1970s had seen Part I on the dissecting table (‘Intensive Greek’ finally found its place in the Tripos regulations - after a hundred years of being taught in women’s colleges alone).139 In the 1980s it was Part II’s turn. The rhetoric of reform and self-justification is invented afresh on each occasion; but at the same time it is always already deeply familiar - a self-conscious, well chosen, historically-inscribed familiarity, which varies the clichés just enough to seem appropriate to new circumstances. Our 1980s’ reformers came out with the usual lines about bringing the Tripos into line with realism: ‘There is nowadays [sic] a wide range of variations in student knowledge of Greek and Latin when they leave school... Most undergraduates have read less widely in Greek and Latin by the time they take Part I than their counterparts ten years ago, and it is therefore desirable that they should be allowed to continue their reading of more ‘central’ authors in Part II. On the other hand, the opportunity to do specialised work is an important attraction of the Part II course ...’ And, inevitably, they made the usual assurances about wide consultation: ‘The Board have benefited from extensive consultation within the Laculty, among both senior and junior members ... ’ The recommendations included the bright-as-abutton re-introduction of the 1879 thesis option for regular one-year Part II candidates.140 They also featured the invention of a brand new Part II Group - Group X ( ‘Interdisciplinary’) - to join the old Groups A to E. It was to be a chance not only to break down the well- defended barriers between the various sub-disciplines (to put philosophy together with literature, to look at the history of women (say) through texts and images), but to celebrate interdisciplinarity in itself as a theoretical stance, a way of doing Classix as aowhole. X for new, X for naughty. There will be no prizes now for seeing quite how familiar Group X must be. Lor all the self-conscious radicalism that accompanied its birth, for all the gloomy grumblings about its cheap Lrancophile theory, Group X was (and remains) a direct inheritor of the traditions of Section D (as it was taught in the 1880s into the early years of the twentieth 139 CUR, 12 May 1971,738-43. This is one place where a gendered story makes a different story. The official version is that B eginners’ Greek was a twinkle in the eye of the 1970s’ liberals; anyone in Newnham or Girton in the late nineteenth century (not to mention Professors Kennedy, M ayor and their friends) would tell you just how wrong that was. It was also in 1971 that ‘Art and A rchitecture’ finally gave Group D a stake in Part I. 140 See above, p. 101. Dr Chadwick was objecting to an earlier 1972 reform, which made a thesis option available to the minority of candidates taking Part II in two years; CUR, 16 February 1972, 569-70.

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century). This is not just a question of the overall themes of the papers set; though they are enough of a giveaway on their own (compare ‘Myth’ Group X 1987-9 with ‘Mythology and Ritual’ Group D, 1888-9).141 It’s also a question of the questions themselves. ‘Does Greek ritual help us to understand Greek myth?’ (Group X, 1987) is strikingly close to ‘The ideas underlying ritual observances’ (Group D, 1903); so too ‘Compare ancient approaches to time-measurement and date-reckoning’ (Group X, ‘Time’, 1996) broaches many of same issues as ‘Give in tabular form a Kalendar of the Roman religious year. Mark the principal feasts, indicate briefly their nature, and adduce parallels where possible’ (Group D, 1893). That is to say, there were significant ways in which X wasn’t new or naughty at all; it was back to classical traditions in teaching and learning that had (almost) been lost after the First World War. But this is where we came in - with the ambiguity of a cultural history that is both disconcertingly familiar and utterly alien. And nowhere clearer than with Group X. For, however much we choose to recognise its links with the more-than-hundred-year-old traditions of our classics, we know also that it (really) was, and is, emphatically new: not just because of the whole range of questions it allows that we cannot slip effortlessly into a nineteenth-century agenda (‘Did Romans bathe in Romanness?’, ‘Is time the enemy of myth?’: Group X, ‘Time’, 1997); but also because of the front-line politics of its introduction into 1980s classics in Cambridge (the implacable opposition, the new fears it raised, the new threats to ‘scholarship’). When we contested this particular ‘innovation’, we were not just replaying (unawares) the battles of the last century - but debating, as we had never done before (nor could have), quite how classics was going to move into the next. Like all explicitly ‘local history’, this particular series of stories about the history of the Tripos has a much more than parochial significance. In terms of the history of classics as a discipline in this country, the local decisions made in Cambridge in the 1870s determined what was going to count as ‘classics’ for more than a century; they defined English classics, and its distinctive collocation of sub-disciplines (A to E), as significantly different from the study of the ancient world anywhere else in Europe; they wrote off the Oxford model of Greats as permanently idiosyncratic, a glorious white elephant in the story of scholarship.142 But the importance strikes even deeper than that - to the experience of history itself within a self-consciously historical culture, to the very nature of historicality. 141 The other X papers since the G roup’s inception have been: ‘Images of W om en’, ‘R hetoric’, ‘The Body’, ‘Classics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth C enturies’, ‘E rotics’, ‘T im e’ and ‘Personal Politics’. 142 i write this advisedly, and full of adm iration for the white elephant. It rem ains the case that the Oxford model (strikingly, the incorporation of modern philosophy into the Classical course) was not widely imitated. I hope to explore the spread of the ‘Cambridge m odel’ of Classics in greater detail in a later paper; the institutional history and personal narratives by which the arbitrary local com prom ise of 1879 was naturalised into CLASSIX.

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The (local) history of classics inevitably forces us to interrogate our own colonisation (or rejection) of our predecessors. It focuses our attention on just how far we can write ourselves into the battles of a hundred years ago; on what processes of reconstruction we instigate when we ventriloquise the attractive rationality of (say) Henry Jackson into our own debates; on the complex double-think of living with the past; on the peculiar collusion of historical happenstance, vested interest and structural necessity that forms our cultural ancestry. (Is it by the skin of our teeth, or by the logic of history, that we study archaeology not Sanskrit in the Classical Tripos?) More than anything, any investigation such as this places modernity on the line - and the conventional, contested boundaries between yesterday and today that modernity always invokes. Where does the past start? What is the difference between the precedent of a century ago and that of a decade? What allows us to draw a boundary between history and now? Or what combination of a common project, living memory and lived tradition must make that boundary indefensible? Not just in Cambridge; but anywhere.

VII

WINIFRED LAMB AND THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM*

David W.J. Gill The appointment of Winifred Lamb to be Honorary Keeper of Greek Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1920 helped to transform the collection into one of the most significant in Britain outside London and Oxford. Until Lamb’s appointment there had been no official keeper of the classical collections and expertise had been sought from members of the University. The Honorary Keeper of the Egyptian Department was F.W. Green of Jesus College, who had previously been Assistant Director of the Fitzwilliam.1 The core of the Greek and Roman collection consisted of the major collections of sculpture donated to the University by E.D. Clarke and John Disney.2 The first main acquisition of Greek pottery was made in 1864 through the purchase of Col. W.M. Leake’s collection.3 Cambridge had also received its share of finds from official excavations at Naukratis in Egypt, in Laconia, at Phylakopi on Melos, and on *

l a m grateful to the Director of the Fitzwilliam M useum, Duncan Robinson, for granting me access to some of the records in the Departm ent of Antiquities. Penny W ilson of the Departm ent of Antiquities has been long-suffering in answering some of the finer questions about the acquisition of individual objects. Paul W oudhuysen provided invaluable help in checking details from the Fitzwilliam M useum ’s Annual Report. I am also grateful to Kevin Butcher, Kenneth Lapatin, Philippa Martin (Sotheby’s), Nicoletta M om igliano, M. Jeremy Rex-Parkes (Archivist, C hristie’s), Christopher Stray, the Hon. Nicholas W allop (Pawsey and Payne), and Lady Helen W aterhouse. Deborah Hedgecock, like W inifred Lam b of Newnham College, made sense of much of L am b’s correspondence held in the Departm ent of M anuscripts and Printed Books at the Fitzwilliam. This is intended to be a preliminary study of L am b’s years as Honorary Keeper based largely on published sources. Full details of gifts made to the Fitzwilliam M useum by W inifred Lamb, and other Greek and Roman acquisitions made during her time as Honorary Keeper, can be found on the W inifred Lamb internet site: http://w w w .sw an.ac.uk/classics/staff/dg/lam b/. 1 Green rem ained Honorary Keeper until he died in 1949; he was succeeded by Professor S.R.K. Glanville, Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology, who held the post until his death in 1956. Like Lamb, Green loaned, and eventually gave, parts of his own private collection of antiquities; e.g. a granite head of a M iddle Kingdom pharaoh (FMAR (1929), 4). Other Honorary Keepers o f L am b’s era included John Charrington (Prints), Mrs W.D. Dickson (Ceramics), Jam es W hitbread Lee G laisher (Ceram ics), Philip Grierson (Coins), S.W. Grose (Coins), Oscar Raphael (Oriental Collections). For Honorary Keepers at the Fitzwilliam: W inter (1958) 16. 2 On Disney: Gill (1990a). 3 On the decision to acquire this collection: Vickers and Gill (1996) 25.

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Figure 19. Winifred Lamb. Thought to have been taken at her excavation at Thermi, near Mytilene ( 1930-1 ). Photograph kindly supplied by Rachel Hood, w ith thanks to Sebastian Brock.

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the island of Cyprus. Little had been done to publish the collection except for Ernest Gardner’s catalogue of the Greek pottery.4 Lamb, a member of Newnham College, had completed the Classical Tripos in 1917 and had then gone to join the Naval Intelligence Department of the Admiralty, almost certainly helping to decipher codes sent to German submarines in the north Atlantic. It is not immediately clear why Sydney Cockerell invited Lamb to become Honorary Keeper in 1919, an offer which she accepted, taking up office in 1920. She had attended some classical archaeology lectures in Cambridge, although as a woman she had been excluded from those of Professor (later Sir) William Ridgeway. Lamb had been making private purchases of antiquities from at least 1916, but it may have been her purchase of Greek pottery from the sale of the Hope heirlooms, and their publication in the Journal o f Hellenic Studies in 1918, which drew her to Cockerell’s attention.5 Cockerell himself had made several purchases at this same sale to develop the Fitzwilliam’s holdings of Greek pottery.6 Lamb’s interest in classical archaeology had led to her being invited to review J.C. Hoppin’s Euthymides and his fellows ( 1917) and G.H. Chase’s Catalogue o f the Arretine pottery in the Museum o f Fine Arts, Boston ( 19 16 ) for Classical Review in 19 19 . 7 These early writings show that Lamb was by now familiar with the new ‘science of vases’ with its attributions to anonymous painters, and it seems likely that she had gained this interest from J.D. Beazley, a fellow member of Naval Intelligence who also worked in Room 40 of the Admiralty. There are few indications of how Lamb spent her time at the Fitzwilliam. No doubt part of it was linked to the cataloguing and listing of the objects acquired in the previous seventy years. Indeed her typed lists of the acquisitions continue to be an important part of the documentation of the department. She was also involved in redisplaying the material. Her appointment was all the more remarkable given her extended periods of work on excavations in Greece, the Islands, and Anatolia. 4

5 6

7

G ardner (1897); cf. Gill (1992c). Ernest Gardner (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge) had excavated at Naukratis in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Fund, and at various sites on Cyprus for the Cyprus Exploration Fund. Lamb in fact purchased these eight pieces from Pawsey and Payne, who may have acted as her agent. This represented lots 19a & c, 32a, 53, and 93 a-d from the sale of the Hope heirlooms on 23 July 1917. Cockerell wrote to Lady Waldstein on 28 July 1917 (five days after the sale) to say that he had bought seven vases in the sale: lots 23, 31,45, 52, 60, 81,85 (the first of two items in this lot), along with lot 205, the feet from ‘a Greek throne’. He spent 1111 guineas on objects from the sale. Cockerell had been busy after the sale ‘calling on people and writing to them for support - The result is that I have found three generous people who will give a vase apiece.’ The purpose of the letter was to ask Lady Waldstein ‘to help me clear off the remainder of the debt’. Cockerell added, ‘In spite of the high prices Sir Arthur Evans congratulated me on my purchases and Mr A.B. Cook here is delighted about them ’. I am grateful to Dr C.A. Stray for drawing my attention to this letter in the Waldstein archive. Some of the pieces which were purchased by Cockerell, but donated to the Fitzwilliam by other individuals, include an amphora (GR.5.1917), a lekythos (G R.6.1917), and a skyphos (G R .7.1917) given by John Charrington, the first Honorary Keeper of the Prints; a krater (GR. 10.1917) given by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam; an amphora (G R.l 1.1917) given by Lord Glenconner; and a pelike (GR.9.1917) from the National Arts-Collection Fund. Lamb (1919a); (1919b).

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Prehistoric and archaic displays In 1920 the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities was seen as distinct from the ‘Egyptian Department’.8 One of Lamb’s first tasks was to rearrange the displays of the department ‘with excellent results’.9 This included a new mahogany case, presented anonymously, for the display of Cypriot antiquities. The following year she was to register, label and rearrange these antiquities which had been acquired from the Cyprus Exploration Fund excavations of 1890. An additional project was to sort through the prehistoric collections.10 This work was to continue into 1922,11 and came to fruition in 1923 when a new display was opened. The Annual Report describes it as follows: The Department [of Greek and Roman Antiquities] has undergone a complete transformation at the hands of its Honorary Keeper, Miss Winifred Lamb. The former Coin-room, rendered unsuitable for its old use by the building of the Marlay Gallery, has become available for prehistoric and archaic Greek objects, and the removal of these from the main Greek Gallery has permitted the spacing out and logical arrangement of the hitherto congested exhibits in a way that improves their appearance as much as it increases their usefulness to students. The effect has been greatly enhanced by the addition of eleven new cases, for which the Museum is indebted to a group of subscribers, including Lady Crosfield, Mr Edmund Lamb, Mr A.H. Lloyd, Mr Charles Mackintosh, Sir Herbert Raphael, Lieut.-Col. Franklin Thomasson, and Mrs John Thomasson.12 The former Coin Room, which used to be on the ground floor of the original building, had moved to a secure location off the end of the Marlay Gallery which was built in 1921.13 This gallery adjoined the main Greek and Roman gallery where the sculptures and Greek pottery were displayed. These developments are very much in contrast to the fortunes of the Egyptian Department where the work of its Honorary Keeper, F.W. 8

9 10 11 12 13

See for exam ple FM AR (1920) 4. The two departm ents now form a single Departm ent of Antiquities. Thus a Greek inscription from Hawara in the Fayum - a memorial to Ti. Iulius Asklepiades - went to the Greek and Roman Departm ent not to the Egyptian: FM AR (1921) 3 (E.84.1921). In 1927, following the acquisition of two Assyrian reliefs from Nimrud, the Egyptian Departm ent was renam ed as the ‘Egyptian and Assyrian D epartm ent’. In 1931 it was renam ed again as the ‘Egyptian and Near-Eastern D epartm ent’. 1931 also saw the presentation of material from Leonard W oolley’s excavations at Ur; Lamb had travelled with W oolley in Greece in May 1921. FMAR (1920) 4. FMAR (1921) 3. FMAR (1922). FMAR (1923) 3. Many of the donors were friends or fam ily of Lamb (see n. 100). Fitzwilliam M useum (1989) xiv. The Marlay Gallery was nam ed after Charles Brinsley Marlay who died in 1912. This bequest included a capital sum of £80,000 ‘for the housing of the collection, for the payment of the Marlay Curator and staff, and for general upkeep’ (W inter (1958) 9). The Coin Room had been supplemented by the gift of more than 10,000 Greek coins from John R. M cClean, as it was by some 13,000 miscellaneous coins from Revd W.G. Searle (W inter (1958) 9). The M arlay extension was delayed by the First W orld W ar, and was not ready for opening until 1924.

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Green, was ‘much hampered by the want of suitable show-cases’.14The prehistoric and archaic collections were enhanced by the donation of prehistoric sherds from various sites in Greece,15 as well as a gift of finds from earlier British School excavations at Sparta. This was also a time when a selection of reproductions of Mycenaean and Cretan antiquities were acquired by an anonymous donation. Behind the development of the Prehistoric Room may have been the guiding hand of A.J.B. Wace of Pembroke College, at this time Director of the British School at Athens. Lamb had excavated with Wace at Mycenae where she had acted as his deputy; her parents had supported the excavation financially.16 Indeed Wace kindly gave the Fitzwilliam a selection of prehistoric material for the new gallery, and in 1924 sold part of his own private collection - including terracotta heads from Thessaly, a Cycladic figure, and two steatite gems - which was presented to the Fitzwilliam by the Friends. Wace himself had been an important source for prehistoric antiquities presented to the Fitzwilliam since the beginning of the century.17 The Fitzwilliam already had an impressive collection of Cycladic finds from Phylakopi on Melos as well as gifts from R.C. Bosanquet, of Trinity College, Director of the British School at Athens from 1900 to 1906.18 However, in 1920 Richard M. Dawkins of Emmanuel College, Director of the British School of Athens from 1906 to 1914, decided on his appointment to a chair in Oxford to withdraw his collection of Early Cycladic material, including marble figurines, which had been on loan to the Fitzwilliam.19 The gap created by this withdrawal no doubt meant that Lamb felt the need to acquire new objects. In 1923 the Cycladic collection was enhanced by the gift of stone and pottery vessels from the National Museum in Athens.20 Wace, apart from selling part of his collection to the Fitzwilliam, was able to present a marble spherical double pyxis, which he had purchased in Athens, in 1922. Bosanquet renewed his interest in the Fitzwilliam by helping the Friends to acquire a Cycladic kernos from the Forman collection when it was sold at the Callaly Castle sale in 1925. Further Cycladic figures, made of shell, were purchased from J.P. Orphanides and presented by the Friends in 1933, and one in marble, said to come from the island of Ios, was purchased from T. Zoumpoulakis and again presented by the Friends in 1934. 14 FMAR (1922). The situation was to be rectified in 1924 (FM AR (1924) 3): T h is Departm ent [Egyptian] has been handicapped for twenty years by the absence of adequate cases, and repeated attention has been called to this in our Annual Reports. We are glad to state that it is a defect that will soon be remedied, funds which will provide four new and satisfactory cases having been allocated for the purpose from the Special Governm ent G rant.’ The display of Egyptian antiquities was changed in 1925 when it took over the space previously occupied by the M usic Library: FMAR (1925) 2. 15 See, for example, FM AR (1923) 3. The sherds were later not considered to be suitable for an art museum and were loaned to the M useum of Classical Archaeology. 16 For Lamb at Mycenae see Gill (forthcoming). See also Lamb (1919-21); Lamb and W ace (1921-3a-e). 17 Gill (1992a) 144-8. The earliest donations were in 1905. 18 For the history of the Cycladic collections in Cambridge: Arnott and Gill (forthcoming). For Bosanquet: W aterhouse (1986) 16-19; Bosanquet and Gill (forthcoming). 19 These were then displayed at the Ashmolean Museum. For Dawkins: W aterhouse (1986) 19-22; Halliday and Gill (forthcoming). 20 See Arnott and Gill (forthcoming).

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The Cypriot antiquities, which had attracted Lamb’s interest when she first started at the Museum, continued to be developed.21 Lamb probably encouraged T. Burton Brown to donate some examples of neolithic Cypriot pottery in 1934, and in 1937 she and her collaborator from Kusura in Turkey, J.R. Stewart of Trinity Hall, presented white slipware and red polished bowls respectively. A Cypriot bronze dagger was presented in 1948 by Hilda Lorimer who had excavated at Mycenae with Lamb. Further Cypriot antiquities were included in the E. Towry Whyte bequest of 1932, followed by the gift from his nephew Sir William Elderton in 1955. This new display of prehistoric and archaic objects then became the focus for Lamb’s acquisition policy. These included an Early Helladic ‘sauceboat’ from Asine - which was being excavated at the time - given by Charles Seltman, of Queens’ College. The scope of the prehistoric collection was widened beyond Greece and Rome: ‘Malta is now for the first time represented by a collection of potsherds of the neolithic period and the bronze age contributed by the Hon. Professor Zammit, the leading authority on the primitive culture of that island.’22 As Lamb’s interest in Anatolia grew through her fieldwork on Lesbos and at Kusura, it also led her to research and publish Anatolian material in the Fitzwilliam as one of the papers in honour of the seventieth birthday of Professor Sir John Myres.23 In order to give a fuller picture of the ‘arts’ of prehistoric Greece, Lamb herself gave additional reproductions which included two gold cups found at Vapheio, near Sparta, and one of the inlaid daggers found at Mycenae. A replica of a Minoan bronze bull in the collection of Captain E.G. Spencer-Churchill was received. In the following year, 1926, Lamb made a coup, which she was probably later to regret, the acquisition of a marble goddess recalling those in faience and ivory found on Crete.24 In early 1926 Lamb persuaded Cockerell to buy a stone statue of a goddess which appeared to be Minoan. Lamb and Cockerell were approached by Charles Seltman, a Fellow of Queens’ College in Cambridge, who claimed that he had acquired the figure on the Paris market. It seems that Sir Arthur Evans had been offered the piece in the autumn of 1925 but felt that the ‘ransom’ price was far too high.25 Lamb was keen to 21 Dr Penny W ilson informs me that before the Second W orld W ar Cambridge was reputed to have one of the best international Cypriot collections outside Cyprus and New York; indeed there had been an intention to build an Institute of Cypriot Archaeology in Cambridge. J.R. Stewart, one of the moving forces behind the Institute, moved to Sydney after the war and took part of the Cambridge collection with him for the Nicholson Museum. 22 FMAR (1924) 3. 23 Lamb 1936-7. On Myres: W aterhouse (1986) 24. 24 FMAR (1926) 2. See Butcher and Gill 1993. 25 The figure was certainly known by spring 1925. In a previously unpublished letter (kindly brought to my attention by Kenneth Lapatin and Nicoletta Momigliano) from Seltman to Evans (21 September 1925), Seltman recorded that he had in his possession ‘a Minoan goddess of Cretan marble found in Crete this Spring not long before I went there last M ay’. Seltman had apparently heard about the goddess from his ‘Athenian agent’ but by May ‘she had already left Crete on her way to Paris’; it was in Paris that Seltman acquired her. In spite of later reported findspots, Seltman was able to record that ‘it was impossible to ascertain either in Crete, or subsequently in Paris, the site where she was found, nor could much reliance have been placed on any statement, had it been m ade.’ Seltman also commented on the price: ‘Her former owner had ... unfor­ tunately a shrewd idea of her extraordinary interest and beauty & extorted a heavy ransom for her.’

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make a purchase that would make the Fitzwilliam ‘world famous’.26 She was prepared to find the money herself, almost certainly from a bequest left to her by her father who had died the previous year. Lamb seems to have had no reason to mistrust Seltman27 and she valued Evans’ opinion that the sculpture was genuine. Lamb had by this time become familiar with bronze age material and its iconography through her work on the Mycenae excavations, the preparation of her study of Greek bronzes, and a visit to Crete and Knossos in April 1921. She was supported in her belief that the statue was genuine by Alan Wace, the former Director of the British School at Athens, with whom Lamb had worked at Mycenae. Wace arranged for the acquisition to be announced in The Times and The Illustrated London News, and he was offered the chance to publish a specialised monograph.28 Rumours soon started to circulate that the piece was not genuine. St. Xanthoudides, the ephor on Crete, was very suspicious of the piece, and in Cambridge, Charles Bicknell, Curator of the Lewis Collection at Corpus Christi College, seems to have encouraged the rumours. Forsdyke, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, seems to have convinced Cockerell that the goddess might have been part of an elaborate hoax when he produced photographs of similar pieces.29 Reviewers of Wace’s monograph, and also the Cambridge Ancient History which carried a plate of the goddess as its frontispiece, were not generally kind, and Lamb took the criticisms personally.30 Such an unpleasant experience no doubt made Lamb cautious about further purchases. Lamb’s suspicions about the art market were no doubt confirmed by the unfortunate purchase of two bronze Etruscan figures from Sotheby’s in 1946 with assistance from the National Arts-Collection Fund; they turned out to be fakes. Such experiences led her to block suggested acquisitions of marble sculpture and terracotta figurines.31

Greek and Roman bronzes One of Lamb’s earliest projects was to start working on Greek bronzes. This aspect of her interests was reflected in the department’s acquisition policy. For example in 1924 the bronzes were considered ‘the most important Greek accessions of the year’.32 It was noted that 26 Lamb in a letter to Cockerell of 13 January 1926. 27 She spoke o f him in warm terms in a letter to her mother from Athens in April 1924. Seltman had acquired three items from the excavations of Asine (Tolon) for the Fitzwilliam in 1924. 28 W ace (1927). 29 One wonders if the goddess lies behind Forsdyke’s com m ents about forgeries in his review of L am b’s Greek and Roman bronzes; see Forsdyke (1929) 284. 30 E.g. Casson (1927); Forsdyke (1927). See also Butcher and Gill (1993) 39 3 -4. 31 In 1951 and 1953. Such items rarely appear am ongst the acquisitions made by Lamb, the Friends of the Fitzwilliam M useum, or as purchases. This is in contrast to the purchase of terracottas at Athens by J.D. Beazley for the Ashmolean M useum in Oxford: V afopoulou-Richardson (1991): no. 20 (1929.461). 32 F M AR (1924) 3.

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opportunities for procuring statuettes of the early period are nowadays somewhat rare, but the Museum is fortunate in having acquired ... a very fine bronze of the latter part of the sixth century. It represents a nude youth standing with the right hand raised. He must have originally held a spear. It is a very pleasing example of the severe and archaic treatment of the period.33 This policy was continued the following year when it was noted that the Fitzwilliam’s ‘series of bronzes has been notably strengthened’.34 By 1928 Lamb’s work on building up the collection of bronzes was such that the Fitzwilliam’s Annual Repo rt had cause to note that they were ‘now well worth the attention of the student’.35 Her study of Arcadian bronzes was published in the Annual o f the British School o f A thens for 1925-6, which led to Woodward, the then Director of the School, inviting her to publish the bronzes found during recent and older excavations at Sparta.36 These studies culminated in Lamb’s GreekoandoRomanobronzes which appeared as part of the Methuen series of Handbooks on Archaeology under the general editorship of A.B. Cook.37 This book reflects Lamb’s personal knowledge of other European collections, especially the holdings of the National Museum in Athens. One of the interesting groups of bronzes formed a bequest to the Fitzwilliam by Miss Jane Duncan in 1932. This was a set of small bronzes which were apparently found near Çesme in western Turkey.38 This complemented the eight figures from the same site which the Fitzwilliam had acquired in 1904 from the McClean bequest.39 At least two of the McClean pieces, the stoat (‘Ferret’) and the deer (‘Elk’), seem to have been part of the collection of votive offerings, including some from £esme, which were purchased from the collection of H.P. Borell of Smyrna at Sotheby’s in 1852.40 When the Fitzwilliam acquired them, Lamb was already familiar with the pieces in the British Museum and thought that they were all Cypriot.41 Lamb would have been familiar with the account that the bronzes from the Purnell collection came with a Cypriot provenance which was continued into Walters’ catalogue of the British Museum’s bronzes.42 The 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40

41 42

FMAR (1924) 3. FMAR (1925) 3. FMAR (1928) 3. Lamb (1925-6); (19 2 6 -7 a-b ). Lamb (1929). See also Forsdyke (1929): 283: ‘[the book] is written with an appreciation of the beauty and hum our of Greek art which is not the less attractive for sometimes being fem inine.’ Haynes (1952). The Fitzw illiam ’s bronzes comprise: ploughm en with team (nos. 3-4, ox fits Copenhagen team, no. 5), deer (no. 15), stoat (no. 16), she-goat (no. 17), sheep (no. 18), bull (no. 19), dog (no. 20), lion (no. 21), and fish (no. 31). For a colour picture of the Fitzwilliam bronzes: Vassilika (1998) 24-5. no. 10 ( ‘a bronze hoard’). For the McClean bequest: W inter (1958) 9. Sotheby’s, 26 August 1852, lots 1535 and 1540. See Haynes (1952) 79-80. Both these lots were purchased by Chaffers. Other M cClean material may be in lots 1537 and 1538, which were also bought by Chaffers. For a further centaur from this group: von Bothm er (1990) 105, no. 86. W hich is how the pieces are described in FMAR. Haynes (1952) 78: ‘Cypriote antiquities were then [1875] m uch in vogue.’ See also W alters (1899) 13-14, 22, 67, nos. 180-3, 228, 229, 485.

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British Museum had in fact acquired a number of pieces from the Borell collection and the Purnell collection where the bronzes were described as Roman.43 The true find-spot was identified when Haynes realised that several bronzes at the British School at Athens came from this group and had been found at ‘Tchesmé’’.44 This was linked to the fact that Borell had lived at Smyrna for some thirty-three years before he died in 1851. Lamb’s part in the story was to supply a cast of the detached ox to see if it would fit the ploughing team in Copenhagen.45 Amongst the other more important acquisitions were a series of purchases made by Lamb in Athens during 1926, 1927, and 1928, of small bronzes from the site of Pherae (Velestino). These were donated by her to the Fitzwilliam.

Greek pottery Although Lamb’s primary interests lay in prehistory and Greek bronzes, she did involve herself with the major holdings of Greek pottery at the Fitzwilliam. Her own interest in the subject can be traced back to her acquisition of some pots from the sale of the Hope heirlooms, and these formed the basis of her first publication in the Journal o f Hellenic Studies in 1918.46 By the 1920s she had started work on what would be the two fascicules of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum. The Greek vases were photographed during 1927 under Lamb’s ‘careful superintendence’.47 These fascicules were to complement Gardner’s earlier catalogue48 and to cover subsequent purchases including pottery from the Hope Collection and the duplicates acquired through the British School at Athens. The second volume was to include the collection belonging to Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon which was then on loan to the Fitzwilliam; this was to be bequeathed to the Museum on Shannon’s death in 1937. An insight into the preparation of these fascicules is found in Lamb’s review of the collection at the Royal Ontario Museum: Few tasks are more exacting than that of writing the text of a catalogue. It is redeemed from drudgery by the need for careful elimination of what is unim43 Sotheby ’s, 8 May 1872, lots 198-200, 627. Some of these had been purchased from the Borell collection. See Haynes (1952) 80. 44 Haynes (1952) 79, from George F inlay’s collection. 45 Haynes (1952) 74 n. 6. 46 Lamb (1918). Lamb did not buy the pieces at auction (C hristie’s, 23 July 1917, lots 19a, c, 32a, 5 3 ,93a-d) but rather from the fine art dealers, Pawsey and Payne. As Pawsey and Payne did not usually handle such material, one suspects that they may have been acting on L am b’s behalf; unfortunately Pawsey and Payne’s basem ent was flooded and the records destroyed when C hristie’s in King Street was bom bed during the Second W orld War. For L am b’s interest in Greek pottery at this early stage see her review (Lamb (1919a)) of J.C. Hoppin, Euthymides and his fellow s (1917). 47 FMAR (1927) 4. The British Academy awarded the Fitzwilliam a grant of £400 towards the cost of the project. 48 Gardner (1897).

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portant and careful arrangement of what is essential: it may even be inspired by the hope of producing descriptions which are pleasant to read, like those in Professor Beazley’s Corpus vasorum. In short, the author, in the midst of his anxiety to give adequate and accurate information, must be careful not to exhaust himself or to risk exhausting his readers.49 These volumes were to receive praise for the quality of the plates and of comparanda.50 Greek pottery was not one of the main areas of acquisition for the Fitzwilliam during Lamb’s time as Honorary Keeper. Nevertheless it is clear that she was on the look-out for pieces which would complement the existing collection. Thus pots which were described in the Annual Report were often qualified: ‘a pyxis-lid of a class hitherto unrepresented in the Museum’;51 ‘a fine Attic black-figure kylix of a shape hitherto unrepresented in the Museum’;52 ‘Miss Hartley, of Girton College, and Mr C.M. Robertson, of Trinity College, have filled a gap in our series of shapes with a small black-glaze pyxis of the 5th century B.C.’;53 ‘a large Tyrrhenian amphora ... which was secured in the sale-room by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam ... is the first representative of its class in our collection.’54Even the substantial collection of antiquities once owned by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon which was bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam on Shannon’s death was described as filling ‘a number of gaps in our series of vases and strengthens materially our collection of antique gems.’55 One suspects that other acqui­ sitions, such as white-ground lekythoi, and a loutrophoros, were made to ensure that the Fitzwilliam’s vase collection had as complete and representative a range of shapes, fabrics and techniques as possible. Lamb had served in naval intelligence at the end of the First World War, getting to know John Beazley. Their acquaintance was such that Beazley even named one of his anonymous painters in honour of Winifred, ‘Der Lamb Maler’. Certainly in her early writings on Attic pottery she used the new language of attribution to anonymous painters. This interest, which perhaps controversially through modern eyes privileged Greek pottery to the status of ‘Art’, is seen in the choice of pieces to acquire for the Fitzwilliam.56 Thus in 1927 Lamb acquired two Attic red-figured cups, one a gift of the Friends of the Fitzwilliam, the other a purchase at the Holford sale from the Special 49 Lamb (1931b) 230. 50 For the Corpus vasorum antiquorum : Lam b (1930),(1936a). For reviews: Gow (1930) (195: ‘Miss Lamb has done her part adm irably’); Beazley (1931) (120: ‘This is a singularly excellent chunk of C orpus'); Dugas (1931); Anon. (1937); W ebster (1937) (87: ‘Miss Lamb is abreast with the latest literature'): Beazley, (1939). 51 FMAR (1923) 3. 52 FMAR (1929) 3. 53 FMAR (1931) 3. Robertson was later Lincoln Professor at Oxford. 54 FMAR (1932) 2. 55 FM AR (1937) 2. 56 Correspondence from Beazley in the files of the Departm ent of Antiquities shows his interest in the Fitzw illiam ’s collection.

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Marlay Fund. The first was attributed57 by Beazley to ‘the Nikosthenes painter’, whereas the second, ‘although very imperfect’, carried the ‘signature’ of the potter Hieron. Both these pieces drew the approval of Charles Ricketts. In a letter to Cockerell in October 1927, Ricketts made the suggestion that the ‘new fine Greek vase’ attributed to ‘the Nikosthenes painter’ was in fact the work of ‘Euergetes’.58 Such a suggestion was no doubt influenced by Beazley’s attribution of one of the cups in the Ricketts and Shannon Collection to ‘the Euergides painter’.59 The second cup drew more comment. Again in a letter to Cockerell, Ricketts wrote: I am overwhelmed by the rarity and value of your ‘Hieron’ vase (i.e. Macron) who is known to be Hieron’s painter. In my opinion this is one of the most outstanding additions you have made, or secured, for Cambridge, and at a ridiculously low figure. Your vase is of a frequent type, but in good preservation. He has, as a rule, suffered in preservation, his ‘Helen’ vase at Boston, which I unhesitatingly rank among the five great vases of the world, is a ghost.60 In 1933 Lamb herself presented a red-figured pyxis, ‘from the school of Douris’, and in 1935 the Greek Antiquities Fund purchased a ‘handsome’ Attic red-figured stamnos, interpreted as Medea and the Daughters of Pelias, which was attributed by Beazley to ‘the Deepdene Painter’.61 Most noteworthy of the acquisitions was an Attic red-figured amphora, formerly in the collection of Baron Heyl of Darmstadt, presented by M iss Sydney Renée Courtauld. This was decorated with a single running Amazon on each side, and had been attributed to ‘the Berlin painter’. Lamb herself had become familiar with this important pot-painter through the works of Beazley.62 During Lamb’s Honorary Keepership other groups of Greek pottery were added to the collection. These included vases belonging to the Burlington Line Arts Club, and even a bell-krater which had once belonged to Dr John Disney, an early benefactor of the Fitzwilliam.63 The Shannon bequest contained some important pieces, mostly purchased on the London market and including Greek pottery, terracottas and some sculpture.64 The importance of this part of the Department’s holdings was such that in 1938 ‘two new cases have been made for the better display of the vases’.65 The 1950s saw a rationalisation of the museum collections in Cambridge, and in 1952 the Greek pottery from the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (now Archaeology and Anthropology) was transferred to the Litzwilliam; some had previously been on loan. 57 FMAR (1927) 3 uses the term ‘ascribed’. The painter is in lower case. 58 Lewis (1939) 383 (13 October 1927). Ricketts had been up to Cambridge to see the cup. 39 Beazley (1918) 19. The cup is now in Cam bridge (GR. 15.1937). It was acquired from W.T. Ready. 60 Lewis (1939) 394 (27 February 1928). 61 FMAR (1935) 3. The Annual Report uses the term ‘ascribed’ but has ‘painter’ in upper case. 62 Lamb (1931a); (1932). 63 Gill (1990b). 64 Gill (in preparation). 63 FMAR (1938) 2.

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Items included an Attic red-figured volute-krater attributed to the Berlin painter, and a red-figured pelike attributed to the Tyszkiewicz painter. Some of the best pieces from Lamb’s personal collection, already on loan, were then given to the Fitzwilliam in 1955; further pieces were added after her death. Lamb’s gift of vases included a number of pieces which she had purchased from the sale of the Hope heirlooms in 1917, the source then of a number of acquisitions for the Fitzwilliam.66

Classical gems and jewellery Alongside Lamb’s rearrangement of the prehistoric collections, the bronzes and the Greek pottery, there was clearly felt to be a need to prepare a new catalogue of the classical gems. At this time ancient gems were thought to fall into the domain of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities rather than the Department of Coins and Medals. The Fitzwilliam already possessed a fine cabinet of gems, in part derived from the collection formed by Col. William Leake.67 During this period there were two major acquisitions of gems; the first through the gift of 42 gems by Alfred de Pass in 1933, the second through the bequest of Charles Shannon in 1937.68 Other gem acquisitions included the gift of Professor H.C. Gutteridge of Trinity Hall, some Gnostic gems and fifteen classical gems by Mrs Venn, the daughter of Sir William Ridgeway, with a further scarab and scaraboid in 1927. The Friends gave two Cycladic steatite gems in 1924, and Miss I.M. Crookenden bequeathed two intaglios in 1958. In 1926 it was decided to ask Betty K. Bum of Newnham College to prepare a catalogue raisonné of the gems in the Museum to replace Professor J.H. Middleton’s catalogue of 1891.69 Bum (1903-82), also of Newnham, had completed the Classical Tripos in 1924, and went on to take a Diploma in Classical Archaeology the following year.70 Her manuscript catalogue of the gems, supplemented by two further studies of the de Pass gems and the Ricketts and Shannon Collection, was never published due to lack of funds. Moreover her study of the Gnostic gems at the British Museum met a similar fate. She continued to work on archaeological projects in Cambridge until the outbreak of war in 1939, when she returned to the family business as Assistant Director. Bum made an number of gifts to the Greek and Roman Department, as well as several coins.71 The jewellery collections, which were modest, were enhanced by the purchase, through the help of Miss S.R. Courtauld, of a number of pieces sold by the Hermitage 66 Gill (1992a) 97-9. Fifteen were acquired in 1917, two in 1943 (from Mrs Goetze), seven in 1955 (from Lamb), and one in L am b’s bequest of 1963. 67 Bierbrier (1995) 240. 68 The Shannon Collection had been jointly owned with Charles Ricketts. If Ricketts had outlived Shannon the collection of gems would have gone to the British Museum. 69 FMAR (1926) 3; F M AR (1927) 4. See also Henig (1994). 70 Newnham College Register I, 318. 71 A Greek gold coin of Philip III (1934); twenty-six Spanish and Roman Republican silver coins (1936); a Greek silver didrachm of Agrigentum, c. 472—413 B.C. (1947).

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Museum, several from the Black Sea region. Other additions included a pair of Greek gold ear-rings, said to have been found near Luxor, presented by Andrew Gow of Trinity College in 1928, and a small gold plaque from Panticapaeum presented by Lady Smith Woodward in 1944. Further jewellery was bequeathed by Miss I.M. Crookenden in 1958. Etruscan and Italian antiquities Although the Fitzwilliam acquired few Roman antiquities in this period, a substantial number of objects were added which would represent the cultures of the Italian peninsula. In particular Lamb seems to have acquired a number of Etruscan pots, bucchero and Italo-Corinthian, to supplement the Fitzwilliam’s already substantial collection of Greek vases. Apart from gifts from the Friends of the Fitzwilliam, and purchases, Lamb herself gave a number of Italian pieces. This may have been linked to her visits to Italy in the mid 1920s. The purchases and the gifts of the Friends show that Lamb had an interest in strengthening and developing the Etruscan and Italian collection. Acquisitions included Etruscan bucchero jugs and kantharoi, an Italo-Corinthian amphora and krater, and various Etruscan and South Italian bronzes. These can be mirrored by the gift of Etruscan bucchero from her grandmother, Mrs. Stephen Wink worth, and an Etruscan bronze cista handle showing two warriors carrying a wounded or dead comrade presented by her mother, Mabel. Lamb herself also gave a number of pieces of Etruscan bucchero, Etrusco-Corinthian pottery, and Etruscan bronzes. Among the Italian and Etruscan gifts which were donated to the Fitzwilliam during this period, special note should be given to the gift in 1936 of an Etruscan black-figured amphora by Lamb’s great friend and Newnham contemporary, Miss Muriel Lloyd, and of a sixth-century Etruscan bronze warrior by the Honorary Keeper of Egyptology, F.W. Green, in 1935. The general archaeological finds on display in the prehistoric and archaic gallery were supplemented by G.F. Rogers’ donation of finds from Motya in 1921. Despite Lamb’s own misgivings about South Italian pottery, three such kraters were donated to the Museum by Mrs Sigismund Goetze in 1943; two were from the Hope Collection, and one from the collection of the founding benefactor of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Dr John Disney.72 Other acquisitions and loans Apart from the Friends, Lamb was able to acquire objects through a small number of purchase funds.73 The Marlay Fund, created from the bequest of Charles Brinsley Marlay in 1912, was used to purchase the Fitzwilliam goddess as well as three pieces of figure-decorated pottery. In the early 1920s Lamb was told that the National Museum 72 Gill (1990a) 227-31. 73 For a survey of acquisitions in this period: Winter (1958).

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in Athens was prepared to sell off some of its duplicate antiquities. Lamb encouraged Cockerell to create a Greek Antiquities Fund and a number of donations were made.74 When it eventually became clear that the National Museum was not going to sell, the Greek Antiquities Fund was spent on a number of items, including seven pieces in 1935 from the sale of the collection of Lord Revelstoke. A legacy by Miss E.M. Evans in 1937 enlarged the fund and it was last used in 1946 to buy, along with the National Arts-Collection Fund, two Etruscan bronze statues - in fact forgeries - from Sotheby’s. A further fund was created through Miss S.R. Courtauld, a former member of Newnham College, and sister of Samuel Courtauld, chairman of Courtaulds.75 This was used to acquire a number of pieces of Greek gold jewellery when it was sold at auction by the Hermitage in 1931. The status of the Fitzwilliam as part of Cambridge University meant that many acquisitions came through gifts and bequests. The most significant was the bequest by Charles Shannon in 1937 of the collection he had made with Charles Ricketts. Some objects from other donors, such as ‘an immense bronze nail reputed to have come from Caligula’s barge’, Lamb thought unworthy as acquisitions,76 whereas a Roman marble copy of the head of an athlete by Polykleitos she considered to have been highly significant.77 In 1952 the Fitzwilliam received a substantial number of items which were transferred from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge as part of the rationalisation of the University collections. One area of development was the study of the Greek inscriptions at the Fitzwilliam by Dr F.M. Heichelheim of Nottingham University. He prepared a list of all the material in the Fitzwilliam, publishing the full text of those which were previously unpublished.78 During the war years he continued to work in the Fitzwilliam, though in the Department of Coins and Medals, on the Sylloge nummorum graecorum,79 Heichelheim’s work on the epigraphic collection may explain the gift of two Greek inscriptions by the Friends in 1927. At first sight such an acquisition seems unusual and inconsistent with Lamb’s regular policy. The two inscriptions, both found in Asia Minor, had been purchased at the May Sotheby’s sale and had formed part of the Archibald G.B. Russell Collection.80 However they had originally formed part of the 74 Among them Dr W.M. Trapp (in 1925 and 1927) and W .A.L. Reckitt (in 1927). 75 Newnham College Register I, 114. She was at Newnham from 1892—4. In the same year, 1931, the Courtauld Galleries were opened at the Fitzwilliam, a gift of Sydney Renée Courtauld, and her two brothers, Sir W.J. Courtauld and Sir S.L. Courtauld (Fitzwilliam M useum ( 1989): xv). One of her pictures, R enoir’s Lao PlaceoClichy, was later purchased by the Fitzwilliam from her daughter Sarah (Fitzwilliam M useum (1989): 163, no. 161); see also the obituary of Prof. Michael Jaffé, TheoTimes, 17 July 1997. 21, which draws attention to the acquisition. 76 It was in fact acquired: G R .l 1.1947. 77 GR.3.1948. See Budde and Nicholls (1967) no. 42. 78 Heichelheim ( 1942). He acknowledged the help of the Honorary Keepers, Lamb and F. W. Green ( for the Greek inscriptions from Egypt). 79 F M AR ( 1940) 2; F M AR (1942), 2; FM AR (1943) 2. 80 The Russell Collection was bequeathed to the Ashmolean M useum, O xford in 1958: e.g. VafopoulouRichardson ( 1991) no. 30. A further piece was a black kantharos (AM 1958.279). I am grateful to M ichael Vickers for supplying this information.

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collection of Dr J. Fiott Lee, who in 1816 had presented the University of Cambridge with other antiquities.81 Presumably Lamb recognised the Cambridge association with the two inscriptions up for auction and advised Cockerell to acquire them. Apart from purchases, loans continued to be accepted. The scope of the collection continued to grow through the acceptance of loans. Apart from objects from Lamb’s own collections, loans included Greek vases from her grandfather Stephen Winkworth,82 eight Greek stone inscriptions from the Master and Fellows of Trinity College,83 and two pieces of ‘Rhodian ware’ from W.H. Woodward.84 In 1938 Rupert L. Joseph loaned three small Graeco-Roman heads.85 The most significant loan of the period was the collection of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. It was loaned in 1933,86 and on Shannon’s death in 1937 it was bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam. One noticeable gap in the acquisition policy of the Department during Lamb’s Honorary Keepership was the absence of Roman antiquities. Sculpture included Lord Carmichael’s gift of a Roman sarcophagus in 1920, G.D. Hornblower’s gift of a Greek marble head from a Roman villa in the Egyptian Delta in 1936, and Viscountess D’Abernon’s gift of the head from a Roman marble copy of Polykleitos’ Kyniksos in 1948. George A. Warren bequeathed a marble altar of Cybele in 1938. Lamb herself gave a Roman bronze figure of a suppliant in Phrygian cap in 1932, and Mrs Leverton Harris a Roman bronze Minerva with owl in 1928. Leonard D. Cunliffe bequeathed a Roman bronze girl’s head in 1937. Lamb also gave a Roman jug and a late Roman openwork bronze disk in 1931. Three pieces of Roman glass were acquired, two from Betty Burn in 1932, and one from Mrs Sigismund Goetze in 1943. E. Towry Whyte’s bequest of 1932, followed by Sir William Elderton’s gift of 1955 included some Roman antiquities. Finally two fragments of Pompeian wall-paintings with given by Professor Sir W.L. Bragg in 1943. The other major gap in the acquisition policy was the collection of sculpture.87 However this was hardly a priority given the important pieces from the collections of Dr John Disney and Professor E.D. Clarke. There is little to add about conservation in the Fitzwilliam. Lamb’s excavating colleague, Nine Six, was reported as restoring a stone bowl in 1936.88 In contrast the Fitzwilliam goddess had to be sent to the British Museum soon after its acquisition for conservation by the technician Axtel.89

81 E.g. a stone shield dedicated by a general, Athenaios, which was claim ed to have been found in Egypt, but is more likely to have com e from Rhodes (GR.38.1865); a hero-relief to M etrodoros, possibly from Sm yrna (GR.28.1865). A further item from the collection, a gold clasp said to be from Ithaca, was presented to the Fitzwilliam by Mrs M.W. Ackworth (GR. 1.1953). 82 FM AR (1922). 83 FM AR (1924) 5. Nicholls (1 9 7 0 -7 lb). 84 FM AR (1931) 5. 83 FM AR (1938) 5. 86 FM AR (1933) 3. 87 For the Fitzw illam ’s sculpture collection: Budde and Nicholls (1967). 88 FM AR (1936) 3. 89 Butcher and Gill (1993) 387.

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Lamb as benefactor It is notable how few purchases were made during Lamb’s period as Keeper; indeed Carl Winter described her as ‘the greatest benefactor in the history’ of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, with the possible exception of Ricketts and Shannon.90 It seems that she often made purchases on her travels or in London and then gave them to the Fitzwilliam.91 Cockerell had recognised the problem of not having a fund for acquisitions and had established the ‘Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum’ in 1909.92 This had assisted with the acquisition of a number of classical objects from 1923 to 1937.93 Cockerell had also hoped to develop the Department through the estab­ lishment of a Greek Antiquities Fund as early as 1925. The aim seems to have been to acquire duplicates which were to be sold by the National Museum in Athens. Lamb even went so far as to select the pieces she wanted, but the sale was never agreed, and in 1935 the Fund was used to purchase an Attic stamnos from Segredakis as well as other antiquities to fill perceived gaps in the collection. Although the Fitzwilliam might be perceived as an ‘art’ museum in which archaeological collections had no place - hence the transfer of most of its sherd collections to the Museum of Classical Archaeology - excavated material was obtained through the British School at Athens and the Greek government. In particular Lamb was able to acquire a number of bowls and a jar from the excavated cemetery of Chalandriani on the island of Syros from the National Museum at Athens.94 Her personal contacts allowed her to give an Attic redfigured pyxis to the Fitzwilliam which had once been owned by Heinrich Schliemann.95 Mabel, Winifred’s mother, who had studied at Newnham from 1880-81, was also a supporter of the Fitzwilliam.96 Winifred enlisted her help in purchasing an Etruscan cista handle showing two warriors carrying a dead or wounded comrade from the sale of the Wyndham Cook Collection and presenting it to the Fitzwilliam in 1925. Indeed it was her financial support for Gertrude Caton-Thompson’s excavations in the North Faiyoum which led to the Anthropological Institute presenting a selection of excavated Middle Kingdom material to the Fitzwilliam.97 Caton-Thompson, a close friend of the Lambs, was allowed to put on an exhibition of the excavations at Hadramaut at the Fitzwilliam during the 1938 British Association visit to Cambridge.98 90 W inter (1958) 15. 91 For exam ple a bronze figure of an athlete acquired at Sparta (G R .l 1.1928). It is clear that Lamb often purchased objects for her own private collection and only gave them to the Fitzwilliam some years later. 92 M ichael Jaffé (Fitzwilliam M useum (1989): xviii) observed that this body em ulated Les A m is du Louvre. The money o f the Friends ‘is available to the D irector of the day to grasp for the M useum ’s collections some rapidly passing opportunity from the market without having first to refer his decision to the managem ent com m ittee, the Syndicate’ (Fitzwilliam M useum (1989) xviii). 93 Further classical gifts from the Friends resum ed in the 1960s. 94 G R .7a-g. 1923. See Arnott and Gill (forthcom ing). 95 GR. 1.1922. Lamb socialised with Sofia Schliem ann in Athens. 96 Newnham College Register I, 69, s.v. M abel W inkworth (1862-1941). 97 FMAR (1928) 2. For details of G. Caton-Thompson see Bierbrier 1995: 87. 98 FMAR (1938) 4.

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Lamb’s wider family were clearly enlisted to help develop the Department. Her father, Edmund, her uncle, Lieut.-Col. Franklin Thomasson," and (presumably) another aunt Mrs John Thomasson were subscribers to the new cases in the Prehistoric Room in 1923, and her mother donated two further cases for the Department in 1926. Her maternal grandmother, Emma, married to a prosperous Manchester cotton-mill owner, Stephen Winkworth, gave a bronze situla and a jug in 1924, and some Etruscan bucchero ware in 1938.100 Lamb clearly saw part of her role as Honorary Keeper as benefactor to the collection. During the 1920s there was little money for acquisitions, and so Lamb purchased or acquired things on its behalf. Lamb was the most significant donor of this period, and in quantity is perhaps only matched in the history of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Fitzwilliam by individuals such as Professor R.C. Bosanquet,101 Sir Henry Bulwer,102 Dr John Disney,103 and Professor A.J.B. Wace.104Two objects were donated before she took up her appointment as Honorary Keeper: the first, a bowl, was presented while she was still an undergraduate in 1916, the second a red-figured hydria in 1919.105 It must have been clear to her that without funds the Department would not develop unless she herself was acquiring and presenting objects; indeed it may have been part of Cockerell’s genius to identify the way that she would pour her personal resources into the Department. Her earliest gift after becoming Honorary Keeper, in 1921, consisted of four early Greek spindle-whorls from Mycenae where she had been excavating. This was to set a pattern of annual gifts of Greek and Etruscan antiquities which lasted until 1933. There are two clear strands to the gifts made by Lamb. The first consisted of Greek and Etruscan bronzes. From 1923 to 1929 she made regular gifts, though this pattern was broken upon the publication in 1929 of her Greek and Roman bronzes,106 Perhaps some of the more unusual pieces were the small votive offerings from Velestino (Pherae) given in 1926 and 1927. 99 Newnham College Register I, 315, s.v. M arjorie Thomasson. Franklin, an M P and cotton-m ill owner,

was m arried to an Am erican, Elizabeth Lawton Coffin. Their daughter Marjorie took the Econom ics Tripos at N ewnham (1920-3). W inifred’s m aternal grandm other was a Thomasson: Newnham College Register I, 69. 100 The situla was the gift of Mrs W inkworth and was purchased at the Sotheby’s sale of 28 February 1924, lot 159. A bronze ju g was also purchased at the same sale (lot 156) and presented to the Fitzwilliam by an anonym ous friend. Lot 159 consisted o f nine items: ‘A Situla with swing handle [GR.8.1924]; three Strigiles [G R.l la-c.1 9 24]; and five M irrors, one having a hunting scene in a circular relief [GR. 13-15.1924] ’. Apart from the situla, the rest of the lot was given to the Fitzwilliam by Lamb herself. It is not im m ediately clear if the bronze jug, given by Mrs W inkworth, and the Etruscan bucchero were already in the possession o f the family or whether W inifred persuaded her grandm other to buy the objects for the Museum. L am b’s grandfather, Stephen W inkworth, had earlier m ade a loan of Greek vases to the Fitzwilliam . 101 Gill (1992a) 6-9. 102 Gill (1992a) 28-32. 103 Gill (1992a) 58-60. 104 Gill (1992a) 144-48. 105 GR.4.1916 and GR.4.1919. The hydria was probably given to mark L am b’s appointm ent as Honorary Keeper. The generosity of the gift, worth £100, is put into perspective when it is realised that this figure was half the starting-salary o f a Cam bridge University lecturer. 106 A further group o f bronzes was given in 1932.

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The second area of acquisitions consists of Greek pottery. In many ways this is surprising given the strengths of the collection, especially due to the purchase of the Leake Collection in 1864. One of the reasons may have been to fill the gaps in the collection so that the Fitzwilliam had a representative series of shapes; a stimulus to this may have been the preparation of the fascicules of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum published in 1930 and 1936. Thus we find Lamb presenting examples of Proto-Attic pottery, Fikellura ware, ‘Phaleron ware’, ‘rare Peloponnesian yellow ware’, Corinthian pottery, an Attic black-figured kyathos and two red-figured pyxides. Other areas of Lamb’s interests included the development of the Prehistoric Room, for which she supplied reproductions of the Vapheio cups and Mycenaean antiquities in 1924, and possibly, as an anonymous donor, in 1923. In addition to purchased objects, Lamb made every effort to collect objects from field-trips and excavations. This included material from Mycenae, Korakou in the Corinthia, Drama, Lembet and Sedes in Macedonia, Sparta107 and Troy. More substantial material was derived from Lamb’s excavations at Thermi,108 and lesser amounts from Methymna, Antissa and Kusura. Lamb also seems to have used friendships made during her excavations to obtain other acquisitions, such as from W.L. Cuttle, R.W. Hutchinson, and most signif­ icantly from Alan Wace. In addition to gifts made to the Department, Lamb made regular loans from her own private collection. The earliest was in 1922 when she loaned some of her Greek vases,109 and further vases were to follow in 1951, including seven items which she had purchased at the sale of the Hope heirlooms in 1917,110 along with three bronze jugs.111 She also loaned bronzes from her collection, notably in 1926 when she was ordering her prehistoric and archaic gallery. This loan consisted of two bronzes, an East Greek female statuette and an Etruscan female figure from a tripod, both dating to the sixth century B.C.112 Lamb’s final act of benefaction was to leave the Fitzwilliam a number of her most cherished objects on her death.

Post-war commitments Lamb’s growing interest in Anatolia seems to have meant that she had less time available for the Fitzwilliam. In 1939 many of the Department’s objects were packed up and sent to Wales for safety, only returning in 1945. There were few acquisitions in the war years, and in 1941 Lamb joined the Turkish language section of the BBC. In 107 In 1923 Lamb helped arrange for exam ples of pottery and other objects from excavations to be sent to various museums in Britain. 108 Gill (1992b) 5 1 -3 , mostly acquired in 1929, 1931 and 1933. 109 FMAR (1922). Stephen W inkworth also loaned Greek vases from his collection. 110 Two cups (GR. 10-11.1955), two skyphoi (G R.12-13.1955), two lekythoi (G R .2-3.1955) and a krater (GR.6.1955). 111 FM AR (1951) 6. This consisted of fourteen G reek red-figure and black-figure vases. 112 FMAR (1926) 4. These loans ‘added greatly to the interest of our exhibit of classical bronzes’.

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1944 she indicated to the then Director Louis Clarke that she wished to resign once the hostilities were over; he refused to contemplate her offer. Her subsequent involvement with the establishment of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara meant that she reviewed her position and again offered her resignation in January 1951. Carl Winter, the then director, again refused, acknowledging Lamb’s important contribution to the Museum. This led her to replay and outline what she perceived her role as an Honorary Keeper to be: Honorary Keeperships are odd affairs. I regard their duties as follows: 1. They should NOT visit less than one day a month, and, if there is work to do, more often. 2. They should produce catalogues if asked. That I would no longer wish to do, as I am concentrating on Anatolian prehistory and could not write a good catalogue on Classical Greek antiquities. 3. They should attend sales if necessary. I always hope that such a necessity will not arise ... There is of course another view of Honorary Keeperships: that they are given to people who are a) eminent, b) well-off. There is an amateurish element about that ... hon. Keepers are the oddest body theoretically, however nice individually. Her resignation was finally accepted in 1958 and it was acknowledged that Lamb had been ‘an invaluable guide and counsellor to three successive directors’.113 Although most of the classical antiquities were in storage, the Fitzwilliam hosted in 1944 an exhibition of Greek art arranged by Charles Seltman.114 This was followed in 1946 by an exhibition of Greek art at the Royal Academy in London which included the Fitzwilliam goddess.115 In 1946 Lamb made her last ever purchase for the Department, a pair of Etruscan bronzes representing the deities Tinia and Uni.116 The statuettes - ‘The Property of a Nobleman’ - had been purchased at a Sotheby’s auction in May 1946 with money from the Greek Antiquities Fund and with assistance from the National Arts-Collection Fund. Lamb no doubt trusted the sale catalogue which recorded that the bronzes had been ‘found many years ago near Prato in Tuscany’. Indeed the authenticity of the objects was enhanced by the claims that ‘the fine greenish patina has been somewhat damaged by water and heat in a bombing-raid’ and that ‘in 113 FM AR (1958) 1. 114 Fitzwilliam M useum (1944). An earlier exhibition had been held in 1942 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. 115 FM AR (1947) 2. Chittenden and Seltman (1947). Jacqueline Chittenden, a graduate of Barnard College, Colum bia University, read classics at N ewnham from 1938 to 1940, follow ed by a D iplom a in Classical Archaeology in 1942. She supervised for Newnham in Greek Dram a and Num ism atics from 1943 to 1946, as well as being Sarah Sm ithson Research Fellow, before taking a lectureship in classical archaeology in Edinburgh. See Newnham College Register I, 44-5. 116 See Butcher and Gill (1993) 400 n. 55.

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the same raid part of the thunderbolt carried by the male figure was lost, and the disc on the head of the female was broken o ff. Lamb, the expert on ancient bronzes and fellow survivor of the blitz, felt that the objects were genuine. Yet three days after the sale, Cockerell wrote to Louis Clarke, the then Director of the Fitzwilliam, about the objects: George Churchill says that Forrer of Spinks told him that the story about injury in the blitz was pure invention and that a clumsy customer of his dropped one of them and broke off the topknot, disclosing bright copper - George gathered that they had come from a suspect quarter and that Forrer doubted their authenticity. But they seem to have raised no suspicions in Beazley or Ashmole.117 Lamb may well have felt that such an allegation undermined her position as Keeper and perhaps damaged her confidence in buying objects on behalf of the Fitzwilliam. Nevertheless the bronzes appeared as genuine - alongside the Fitzwilliam goddess in the Handbook to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, published in 1952.118 Lamb also sought to change the display of the galleries themselves. In 1947 she asked for permission to change the cases in the ‘archaic’ Room, and the main gallery was to have a new case in which she planned to put ‘those horrible South Italian vases’.119 Lamb was also involved in preparing a new guide for the Fitzwilliam.120 Lamb had often turned her hand to writing to verse during her time in Greece. In 1947 she wrote this poem for the Director, Carl Winter: The Greek Department has on show Statues collected long ago And rather bad. So turn from these And view our small antiquities: The cups that held Athenian wine With dainty pictures, neat and fine; Lady from Crete in adoration (But with a tarnished reputation) Bronzes superbly patinated And each one accurately dated! Products of Rhodes and Thessaly And colonies across the sea. And when you’re tired of Greece and Rome Buy picture cards, and study them at home. 117 Letter o f 17 May 1946. For B eazley’s and A shm ole’s role in sales: Herrmann (1980) 179, 231. Both men were introduced to S otheby’s through Charles Bell, Keeper of the Departm ent of Fine Arts at the Ashmolean M useum since 1908. 118 The bronzes and the goddess appeared in the second edition of 1954, but were rem oved in the 1964 edition. 119 Further changes to these galleries were made by her successor R.V. Nicholls. 120 Fitzwilliam M useum (1952).

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Although Lamb was only an honorary keeper, and, with other commitments such as field-work, unable to spend much time on the collections, she was still able to produce two significant fascicules publishing the Greek pottery, as well as overseeing the addition of numerous items to the collections. The post-war period, as we have seen, witnessed a rationalisation of the museum collections in Cambridge. In 1947 parts of the substantial holdings of Cypriot material, derived in part from earlier sponsorship of the Cyprus Exploration Fund, was transferred to the Museum of Classical Archaeology.121 In 1952 the Fitzwilliam acquired the classical vase collection of the then Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; two Roman milestones were transferred in return.122

Lamb's legacy On Lamb’s resignation in 1958 Richard V. Nicholls, a graduate of the University of Auckland, was appointed as Senior Assistant Keeper in the Antiquities Departments.123 Pressure of finances, and the distancing of the Museum from objects looted from archaeological sites, has meant that there have been fewer major acquisitions.124 Apart from Lamb’s own bequest, major groups of material have been received from Lord Walston, son of Sir Charles Waldstein, sometime Director of the Fitzwilliam and excavator in Greece. The decision by the Wellcome Trustees to disperse their collection meant that the Fitzwilliam acquired a small part of the substantial number of antiquities amassed by the pharmaceutical millionaire, Sir Henry Wellcome.125 Perhaps the most prominent major acquisition has been the purchase in 1984 of the collection of terracotta figures formed by James Chesterman,126 reflecting the then Keeper’s Richard Nicholls - own interest in coroplastic art.127

121 Budde and Nicholls (1967) xvi. In fact some of this Cypriot material had already been on display in the M useum of Classical Archaeology; see observations on some of the Fitzwilliam material in M itford (1946). In 1997 the Fitzwilliam Museum opened a Cyprus Gallery through the generosity of the Leventis Foundation. As a result, material from other Cambridge collections has been returned to the Fitzwilliam. 122 Anon. (1954) 111; see also Taylor and Collingwood (1922) 282, fig. 14, no. 11. 123 This seems to be the end of separate departments. Subsequent curatorial members of the Departm ent of Antiquities have been: Janine Bourriau (1973; Keeper, 1984-90), Julie Dawson (1984-, Conservator), Dr Christopher Simon (1984-7), Dr David Gill (1988-92), Dr Eleni Vassilika (1990-, Keeper), Dr Penelope W ilson (1992-). 124 For acquisitions after L am b’s time: Nicholls (1961-2); (1965-6); (1970-7 la); Gill (1990c). See also Gill (1992a); (1992b). For recent catalogues: Kenna (1967); Nicholls (1993); Henig (1994). R.V. Nicholls, A catalogue o f the Greek and Roman bronzes in the Fitzwilliam M useum was announced in the publication of Budde and Nicholls (1967) but it has never appeared. However see Nicholls (1982b). For a selection of Greek and Roman antiquities: V assilika (1998). 125 Peyer and Johnston (1986) 289-90; Nicholls et al. (1983). A large proportion of W ellcom e’s Egyptian collection is now on display at the Egypt Centre in the University of W ales Swansea. 126 Chesterm an (1974); Nicholls (1978a); (1978b); (1978c). See also Gill (1990c) 293. 127 E.g. Nicholls (1950); (1952); (1970); (1981); (1982a); (1984); (1995); Desborough et al. (1970). See also Nicholson (1965) 11.

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In addition major loans have been accepted from some of the Cambridge colleges.128 These included part of the classical holdings of Trinity College,129 and in 1991 Corpus Christi College offered the massive collection of antiquities, gems and coins formed by one of their fellows, Revd Samuel Savage Lewis.130

Conclusion Lamb’s contribution to both the Fitzwilliam and archaeological field-work is remarkable. Her long period as Honorary Keeper saw great growth in the size of the classical collections of the Fitzwilliam in spite of a limited acquisitions fund. Such developments relate in part to her good working relationship with Sir Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam. Yet Lamb’s privileged background no doubt gave her opportunities which were not available to all. Her parents and wider family were willing to put their money into developing the collections of the Fitzwilliam as well as supporting the excavations with which Lamb was involved. An Honorary Keepership at the Fitzwilliam gave Lamb a standing within Cambridge University which she is unlikely to have had otherwise. Although Lamb was herself heavily involved in field-work in Greece and Turkey during the period when she was Honorary Keeper, she found time to devote to the display and publication of the collection. Particularly noteworthy was her initiative to create a Prehistoric and Archaic Gallery within the setting of what was in effect a museum for the fine arts. In part this reflects the contemporary interests of classical archaeologists working in Greece. Lamb’s methodical and careful approach is revealed in the publication of the Greek vases from the collection. She also encouraged friends and colleagues to work on large parts of the collection, such as the gems and the inscriptions. Without Lamb’s association with the Fitzwilliam, the Museum’s holdings of Greek and Etruscan antiquities would have been much the poorer. Her interest in ancient bronzes led her to create an important collection. Moreover the development of the classical collections reflects the keen interest taken in the Museum by members of the wider Cambridge community.

128 Nicholls (1978d). 129 Nicholls (1970-71 b); ( 1978(1). 130 See, for exam ple, Bicknell (1921); Henig (1975); Nicholls (1978d); Sylloge nummorum graecorum ( 1972); Nicholls ( 1993); Spier & V assilika (1995).

VIII

THE CAMBRIDGE GREEK AND LATIN BOOK CLUB: A BRIEF ANTIPHONAL ACCOUNT BY J.M.R. AND J.A.C., WITH AN APPENDIX J.A.C. No attempt should be made to elevate the Cambridge Greek and Latin Book Club to a significance, in relation to the story of classical studies in Cambridge, such as is rightly attributed to the Cambridge Greek Play. As a topic in the history of mentalités it deserves to be no more than an exiguous footnote. On request, however, we offer a brief account, which must be prefaced by a word or two, for a younger generation less familiar with such institutions than ours was, about what a Book Club was, and is. There used to be many such clubs in Cambridge, college ones and Faculty ones and departmental ones: and the collegiate ones, at least, are not quite extinct. The way they work is, by and large, this: members of the club ‘put in’ books of their choice, i.e. propose them for acceptance at meetings of the club or just order them from the approved bookseller (the latter was our case). They do not pay for the books at the time of ordering, for such clubs rest on heavy credit from the booksellers. The books ‘put in’ circulate round the group, each member being responsible for passing each book on to another member; and at the next meeting of the club after a particular book has completed its circulation it is auctioned amongst those present. After each auction the bookseller is at last paid for the books that have gone round and been sold. Characteristic of such clubs is a system of small fines, for not ordering any book or for not buying one at the auction, and so on, which maintain the club’s finances in balance. The meetings for auctioning books may be annual or more frequent; and they are sympotic. In this part of the process there is a strong element of homo ludens: one characteristic fine, for example, is for making a derogatory remark about a book while it is being auctioned. It’s very familial and Victorian/Edwardian, like charades - desipere in loco. The well-being of such a club at any time much rests on the willingness of some member to take the responsibility of running it - keeping the lists up to date, getting in and paying over moneys, negotiating with the bookseller, and so on. J.M.R. The account of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Book Club that follows is derived mainly from the Club’s records, passed on to me when I became its secretary (the last, as it turned out) in 1985, to which I have added a little spice from the anecdotes of other members and from my own memories.

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The origin of the Club are unknown to me. The earliest record I can find is in Auction Record Book no. 1 (see no. 4 below), dated 11 May 1909, when W.N. Williams ordered for circulation Sandys’ edition of Jebb’s The characters o f Theophrastus, published in 1909 by Macmillan, published price 7s.6d., cost to the Club nil (see further below), which was later sold at auction to Mr Duff for 6s.6d. That may be the actual beginning, but it is not necessarily so. On the front of this Record Book is pasted a rectangular piece of leather with the Club’s name stamped in gilt letters; perhaps the production of such rectangles to paste on club minute-books and the like was regular at the time, but to me it suggests the possibility that it was cut from the cover of an earlier volume more luxurious than the Club thought fit to repeat. So far, however, I have found no positive evidence of the Club’s earlier existence. Booksellers have no relevant records (I am grateful to Mr Basil Hall for checking in the University Library that there is no help to be had from the archive of Deighton Bell, the Club’s first known bookseller); and living memory preserves no tradition. The records currently in my keeping, which I intend to deposit in the University Library shortly, are as follows: 1. First is a list o f rules. The earliest complete example, dated 1972, is headed ‘Revised version’, but it is reasonable to suppose that the opening items go back to the Club’s origins, since they prescribe its name, its object and the general lines of its organisation. The object was ‘to obtain and circulate among members recent editions of the Greek and Latin classics and books likely to be of use to classical teachers and students’. Membership was to be by invitation and there was no subscription; funds to meet the bookseller’s bills and all incidental expenses were to be got (a) from the sale of books after their circulation at an annual auction to be attended, in principle, by all members and (b) from fines imposed for failure to observe the rules for circulation of books and for attendance (and behaviour) at auctions. Any shortfall was to be met by a ‘one-off’ levy calculated at the end of each auction and proposed and voted on forthwith. Thus, there was some pressure on members to incur a fine or two (although there were always some persons who prided themselves, in a spirit of lifemanship, on never doing so) and to bid a little openhandedly. For the administration of the Club there was to be an honorary secretary/treasurer from among the members. In principle that job was a light one. In fact, in modern times at least, it called for some devotion; and the names of Robert (‘Bobby’) Gardner of Emmanuel and James Diggle of Queens’ deserve to be remembered as of men who showed that quality in high degree. Among the rules for the circulation of books, one imposed a limit on the total sum any member might commit the Club to spend on books; that, as book prices rose, annually caused problems and had often to be revised, but in the early days it was evidently unprob­ lematic. In 1909 the highest-priced book listed was W.B. Dickson’s translation of Cauer’s Grundfragen der Homerkritik (2nd Suppl.), at 21s.0d., ‘put in’ by Mr Sheppard and sold at auction to Mr Giles for 16s.0d. Members were obliged to ‘put in’ at least one book each

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year, and to ensure that they did not ‘put in’ a book already ordered by another member. (Provided that, as was usually the case, the bookseller kept and made available a record of the books ordered for the Club, that was not as tricky as it sounds.) During Full Term, outside which all might keep books as long as they pleased, the member who ‘put in’ a book was allowed to keep it for a fortnight (all others for one week only) before passing it on to another member, of whose presence in Cambridge the passer-on was supposed to assure himself. A form pasted onto the paper covers in which the books were specially encased was for members to enter the dates on which they received and passed on each book. Fines for lateness increased in severity according to the length of the delay; but an upper limit was fixed for mercy’s sake, which was, of course, also exercised in the case of illness. Among the rules for the conduct of the auction there were fines for non-attendance, only waived for those who could successfully plead ‘grave cause’. That rule could generate lively discussion: I remember a member’s wedding-anniversary dinner being not accepted as ‘grave cause’: he was told that he must pay for his menus plaisirs. A member was required to buy any book he had ‘put in’ that did not attract a bid - his powers of judgement being thus open to damaging witticisms. And each member was required, on pain of fine, to buy at least one book at each auction, which led to lively bidding when the number of books that had come round for auction was small. 2. Secondly there are audited accounts. The surviving series starts in 1966 and records annually the amounts paid to the bookseller, and to the secretary for the entertainment at the previous auction (wine and biscuits), for printing the forms to go on the paper covers, and for typing and circulation of notices. The accounts reveal the sadly increasing cost of books (as of wine and biscuits) in the second half of this century, but little more - except, perhaps, that secretaries more and more reduced the expenses by typing or writing notices themselves, and sometimes even delivering them themselves. There was no rule for the appointment of auditors: secretaries dragooned other members into checking their addition. 3. Thirdly there is a small file o f correspondence, almost all from the 1970s. It contains one or two interesting individual reactions to the Club and its affairs, but no basis for an overview. 4. Fourth is the record o f books circulated, consisting of two volumes which record the books auctioned from May 1909 to February 1991 and one which records them simply as books bought between July 1952 and January 1973. From these records the membership list can be reconstructed. In 1909 and the years immediately following the secretary entered in the record the date on which each book was ordered, its title, publisher and publication date, the published price, cost to the Club, name of the purchaser at the auction, and sum paid for it then. Subsequently there were changes: notably, from 1921 the publisher’s name, publication date and cost to the Club were omitted.

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In addition, the early records occasionally note a book lost, and sometimes that what was lost has been found; in which case there may be an indication of the delinquent in whose rooms it had come to light. To my surprise, Professor Adcock is named several times for this misdemeanour; and once Mr B. Hall ward built up a small cache of books - but did not repeat his crime. Caches of that kind, occasionally much larger than Mr Hall ward’s, did sometimes interrupt the Club’s serenity in more recent times; indeed, at one point they threatened its existence, which depended on steady circulation and the arrival of books on the auction table without too monstrous a delay. In my time we were inclined to believe that the caches were the result of our own generation’s decline in moral standards; but evidently our predecessors were not blameless. We are also told in the record if a book was withdrawn. Usually that was merely for the rather boring reason that the recommender had failed to discover that someone else had already ordered it. Once I thought I had come across something more interesting, since a book was marked ‘Unsuitable: to be destroyed’; but the recommender had been Professor R.M. Cook, still available for questioning, and he tells me that when he read it he felt it to be too unutterably childish to be circulated. What is regrettable is the absence of minutes from which one could have reconstructed the way the annual meetings went, beyond the bare fact of the auctioning of the listed books at the stated prices. That can only be extracted from the memories of surviving members - except that in one of the letters in the correspondence file a member who was resigning because he was leaving Cambridge describes the auctions as among the most pleasant events of the Cambridge classical year; and that is indeed how they seemed to me when I arrived in Cambridge, a foreigner, in 1951. In that setting one seemed for the first time to be in real touch with, and given an opportunity to enjoy the company of, others concerned with classics in Cambridge. Nevertheless, although the social function the Club performed is something that many of us remember with particular warmth, it was only symposiastical once a year: most of the time, the members simply received books from one another and delivered them to each other’s colleges. In the background to the Club’s genesis and development we have to take into account the existence in Cambridge of other book clubs and the trend towards more intercollegiate activity in the classical field indicated by the still-active Cambridge Philological Society (1868-) and the now defunct Cambridge Classical Society (1903-29). Those last, however, had their function in discussion and research rather than in the practical object furthered by the Book Club, to look at books useful for teaching and for recommending to students. Given that, we might ask whether the book trade itself had any influence on the Club’s foundation. It certainly helped: one could even say that it subsided the Club. We don’t know anything about the Club’s contract with Deighton Bell, who were its chosen booksellers in its early years. It took its custom to Heffers after the Second World War, for reasons not clear to me (though I suppose they may be connected with the increased inclination of Deighton Bell to specialise in old books); and although the

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records of Heffers cannot help us the correspondence file shows something of the nego­ tiations with them, from which it is clear that the manager of the Classics Department thought the contract advantageous and persuaded Mr Heffer to that effect. That manager was Mr Frank Cowell, himself an enthusiast for our subject, who personally delivered to colleges the books ‘put in’ by members who did not wish to collect ordered books when the firm decided not to undertake that service. The bookseller had, indeed, to wait for payment, which was made once a year only, but was assured of at least one purchase in respect of each member annually and of eventual and regular payment of the bill without a tussle. In the third quarter of the twentieth century that amount of credit could no longer be granted, and Heffers pressed for more frequent payment, so that in the end the Club paid twice a year. The part played by the publishers at the beginning of the century is also worth considering: it is possible that some of them, at least, played a part in encouraging the Club’s establishment by what seems to have been an early version of the system of ‘inspection copies’. For between 1909 and 1921 it appears that a number of books were given to the Club free (hence the heading ‘Cost to the Club’ alongside ‘Published price’ in the records of those years). Macmillan is the most frequently named publisher to have done that (seven books in 1909, four in 1910), but others, such as John Murray and Putnam, also appear. The subsidy involved was valuable: in 1909 the books ‘put in’ were priced at £10 16s.6d. but the cost to the Club was only £3 13s.Id. They sold at auction for £9 8s., nicely financing the costs of entertainment, etc., and constituting a distinct saving in the book bills of the members. The subsidy ceased at the end of 1920 for reasons not indicated. The members were evidently undaunted, however. For the Club in those days and for long afterwards was certainly perceived as useful. As I remember it, one commonly ‘put in’ books which it was helpful to check for their appropriateness to students and so to college libraries, so that everyone had an interest in seeing almost all the books circulated and not only those related to a particular specialisation. There wasn’t time to read them all (and those who failed to appreciate that ran up fines of horrific dimensions); only to skim them for the most part and read a few. (One could, in fact, ask to see particular books for examination at greater leisure after their circulation but before they were auctioned, but that was not very much done.) The list of books ‘put in’ has already been the object of scholarly search with a view to a theoretical reconstruction of Housman’s library.1 No doubt much more could be done with it; I offer here just three illustrations of what the members put into circulation. Categorising the books very crudely, I find that in 1909/10 they ‘put in’ 25 books (2 in French, 3 in German), of which 6 were editions of classical authors, one a translation, 6 discussed classical authors or history of literature, one language, 4 philosophy, religion and science, 5 ancient history and 2 archaeology. In 1930 they ‘put in’ 40 books (8 in French, 7 in German) of which 7 were editions with commentaries or just commentaries, 14 discussed classical authors or history of literature, one language, 6 1 Naiditch (1988) 55 nn. 17-1, 159 nn. 46-2.

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philosophy and religion, 3 ancient history, 8 archaeology; and one was post-classical in theme. In 1970 there were 63 books (4 in French, 5 in German) of which 5 were editorial/commentaries, 6 discussed classical authors or history of literature, 2 language, 13 philosophy and thought, 22 ancient history, 10 archaeology and 7 postclassical themes. Editions never ceased to appear, but formed a much smaller proportion of the total as time passed: one can follow the developing interest not only in ‘life and thought’ but in the transmission of the classical tradition. That, of course, reflects the changing preoccupations of the members, which is to say of the Classical Faculty, and the changes in the focus of the Classical Tripos. Who, then, were the members of the Club? I list in an appendix the members in the three years for which I have analysed the books circulated: here I note just a couple of features of the membership taken over the whole period of the Club’s existence: 1. In 1910 the list is markedly un-professorial: with the exception of Dr Giles, Reader in Comparative Philology, they are all, I think, college teachers. In 1912 Housman, Kennedy Professor of Latin, appears, in 1922 Pearson, Regius Professor of Greek; and in due course two existing members, Adcock and Robertson, were appointed to the chairs of Ancient History and Greek respectively and remained members - but up to the outbreak of the Second World War that is all. After that there were rather more professors, sporadically, but unless they had been members before they tended to resign quite soon. The Club, it may seem, was always more attractive to those whose first concern was college teaching and who had come to value it in their capacity as college teachers. It looks as if, in any case, by c. 1970 the Club was reaching out for younger members; but that policy, if such it was, was capable of having ambivalent effects, in so far as more members entailed slower circulation. 2. And what of women? Although Cambridge classics included some prominent women from a comparatively early date in the history of women’s education, and women figure already in the late nineteenth century in the Cambridge Philological Society, there was no woman member of the Greek and Latin Book Club before 1932, when Miss Bacon of Girton is attested, followed in 1935 by Miss Toynbee of Newnham and subsequently by all the women dons. It would have been interesting to have the minutes of the meeting at which Miss Bacon’s name was proposed; but they might not have revealed a story of passion and prejudice. It is very possible that no woman previously had wanted to join: symposia were not much a feature of their own traditions, and, as emerged towards the end of the Club’s life, even the modest expenses entailed by the auction procedure could prove too high for their purses. Furthermore, some of the most prominent women, like Jane Harrison and Eugenie Strong, were less interested than their male colleagues in the more purely philological side of classics, the editions and so on. But prejudice cannot altogether be ruled out, and maybe the cosy male group of whom the Club consisted was inclined to forget about the women until they were allowed to be University Lecturers and sit on the Faculty Board: Miss Bacon went onto the Board in 1930, I think.

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J.A.C. So what was the point and purpose of it all? We need not, and should not, go for the single answer. J.M.R. has already brought out the practical purpose and usefulness of the Club, at least in its early days, and I don’t desire that aspect to be forgotten; but she leaves me to make a few rather different points. The Greek and Latin Book Club is useful to contemplate precisely because it came to an end. It came to an end presumably because it wasn’t fulfilling a purpose that enough people thought important enough any more; so its demise may give some clues as to what purpose it did fulfil when it was most flourishing. 1. My first point is: relative isolation. The scientific departments were, to be sure, different in this, but the arts subjects were more purely college-based than will easily now be conceived. There was no focus of Faculty activity at all: no Faculty commonroom, no having coffee together; many lectures were given in the lecturers’ colleges. When I served as secretary of the Faculty there was no Faculty office, I dictated to a lady typist who came to me twice a week from an agency, and the whole files of the Classical Faculty were in one cabinet which was passed on from the college of one secretary to that of the next. Only a few ritual occasions brought the members of the Faculty together: Tripos examining, Scholarship examining, the annual Faculty meeting, the Gray Lecture party, meetings of the Cambridge Philological Society - and the Greek and Latin Book Club. It was, as J.M.R. has already said, a source of cohesion and the sense of belonging. I need not enlarge on the comforting feeling that comes from, for example, seeing your colleagues behaving exactly as they are known always to behave! 2. My second observation is that, formerly, classics - and not, indeed, only classics - was intellectually a more unified subject than, by the time of J.M.R. and myself, it had become. Ancient history, ancient philosophy, and so on, had by my time reached the stage of separate disciplines within a general field; but go a generation further back and they are offshoots of the tree of philology. And, which is crucial, in college teaching we were all maids-of-all-work; when I was an undergraduate you were not usually supervised in college at all for Part II of the Tripos. Add to that the feature that relatively few books were published anyway, and you can see the consequence: almost any book ‘put in’ by a member of the Club was likely to be of appeal to most of the other members. (I recall a terrible episode when Professor Guthrie had caused to go round the Club a book that was mostly about modem philosophy, and was arraigned at the annual meeting and fined for ‘putting in’ a book that was not of ‘general interest’!) I don’t need to spell out what has happened in that regard nowadays; but as a consequence, even in its official (so to speak) role as an encouragement to read the latest books, as well as in its social role, a Faculty circulating book club was bound to lose its appeal in a way that general circulating book clubs have not necessarily done. Members of the Faculty nowadays take account of new material relating to their special fields without the need for prodding, and for more general reading in the rest of classics they have less and less time.

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3. For in the past - and this is my final point - even the past that J.M.R. and I remember, being a University teaching officer was a more leisurely occupation than it has, alas, become. Administration was minimal, assessment non-existent, University examining relatively infrequent for any individual (the college examinations for entrance schol­ arships were the greater and more frequent burden), graduate students thin on the ground. There was, therefore, time to read, time to see classics as a whole, as ‘Das Erbe der Alten’, as Lowes Dickinson taught my teachers to see it and as Moses Finley taught the teachers of the present generation not to see it (‘classics is not a subject’). That’s what - for good or ill - we’ve lost, and the Greek and Latin Book Club has been a casualty of that development too. But let me not create a false impression: we never did (or not in my time) discuss the books at the meetings of the Club. And that’s why I think the whole episode can best (if not only) be seen as a footnote in the history of rituals: the important thing was the meeting, the gathering of a community to celebrate its own existence and so define itself as against the rest of the world. [The Greek and Latin Book Club’s last auction took place in 1991. Its final meeting was held in 1993, when its remaining liquid assets were consumed.]

APPENDIX The members buying books at auction in 1910 M r C.F. Angus, Trinity Hall M r S.G. Campbell, C hrist’s M r F.H. Colson, St John’s M r J.D. Duff, Trinity M r G.M. Edwards, Sidney Sussex M r H.J. Edwards, Peterhouse Dr P. Giles, Emmanuel

Mr Mr Mr Mr Mr Mr

L.H.G. Greenwood, Emmanuel and K ing’s E. Harrison, Trinity H. Rackham, C hrist’s E.E. Sikes, St John’s C.E. Stuart, Trinity W.N. W illiam s, Trinity and Selwyn

The members buying books at auction in 1930 M r E. Abbott, Jesus Prof. F.E. Adcock, K ing’s M r C.F. Angus, Trinity Hall M r S.G. Campbell, C hrist’s M r M.P. Charlesworth, St John’s and Jesus M r H.T. Deas, Gonville and Caius M r J.M. Edmonds, Jesus M r R. Gardner, Emmanuel Dr P. Giles, M aster of Emmanuel M r A.S.F. Gow, Trinity M r L.H.G. Greenwood, Emmanuel and K ing’s M r W .K.C. Guthrie, Peterhouse

M r R. Hackforth, Sidney Sussex M r B.L. Hallward, Peterhouse and King’s M r E. Harrison, Trinity Prof. A.E. Housman, Trinity M r D.W. Lucas, K ing’s Dr A.L. Peck, C hrist’s M r R.M. Rattenbury, Trinity Prof. D.S. Robertson, Trinity M r F.H. Sandbach, Trinity M r E.E. Sikes, St John’s M r A.P. Sinker, Jesus Mr W.N. W illiams, Selwyn and Trinity

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The members buying books at auction in 1970 Mr J.R. Bambrough, St John’s M r J.C. Bramble, Peterhouse M r M.H. Braude, St C atharine’s M r A.W. Bulloch, K ing’s Dr J. Chadwick, Downing Miss A.K. Clarke, Lucy Cavendish and Newnham M r J.A. Crook, St Jo h n ’s Dr J. Diggle, Q ueens’ Miss A. Duke, Girton M r H.J. Easterling, Trinity Mrs P.E. Easterling, Newnham Dr J.D.G. Evans, Sidney Sussex Mr A.D. Fitton Brown, Corpus Christi Mr R. Gardner, Emmanuel M r G.T. Griffith, Gonville and Caius Prof. W .K.C. Guthrie, M aster of Downing M r R.L. Howland, St John’s

M r A.G. Hunt, Fitzwilliam M r E.J. Kenney, Peterhouse Dr J.T. Killen, Jesus M r W.K. Lacey, St Catharine’s M r A.G. Lee, St John’s Dr G.E.R. Lloyd, K ing’s Dr A.H. McDonald, Clare Dr V. Nutton, Selwyn Dr A.L. Peck, C hrist’s Dr W.H. Plommer, University (now W olfson) Miss J.M. Reynolds, Newnham Prof. F.H. Sandbach, Trinity Dr F.H. Stubbings, Emmanuel M r R.T. W allis, Churchill M r L.P. W ilkinson, K ing’s M r A.G. W oodhead, Corpus Christi

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INDEX

Page references to illustrations are in bold type. A dcock, F.E. 1 6 0 ,1 6 2

C ust, H .J.C . 32

A lbert V ictor, P rince 38 A lford, M . 59

D aniel, M .M . 57

A rch er-H in d , R. D. 1 1 ,5 9 , 124, 126 A u sten -L eig h , A. 32 B ab in gto n S m ith, H. 39 B acon, A. 162 B alfour, A. 8 3 ,8 9 B alfour, E. 12 B eazley, J.D . 1 3 7 ,1 4 4 B eerb o h m , M . 44-5 B ennett, A. 46

D avies, E. 55 D aw kins, R.M . 139 D ickinson, G .L. 61, 164 D iggle, J. 158 D isney, J. 1 3 5 ,1 4 5 ,1 4 7 D obree, P. 3 D odds, E .R . 14 D rum m ond, N. 63 D uff, J.D . 158 D uke, W . H. 67

B ennett, M .A . 55

D urden, R. 46

B enson, A .C . 32, 39 B enson, F. 30

D urnford, W . 3 9 ,4 4 E dm onds, J.M . 59

B lo m field , C .J.

3

B osanquet, R .C . 139 B rad sh aw , H. 1 2 ,1 2 0 -1 B road, C .D . 26 B rock, D .M . 67 B row n in g , O. 32, 116, 122 B row n in g , R. 38 B u m , B .K . 146 B urn, R. 6, 19, 105-7, 111-12, 117 B urstall, S. 55 B utler, H .M . 7 7 ,7 9 C ase, J.E. 2 8 ,2 9 ,3 9 C ato n -T h o m p so n , G. 150 C lark, J.W . 3 1 ,3 6 ,3 9 C lark, W . G. 6, 19, 105-7, 112 C larke, E .D . 135 C larke, L. 153-4 C ock erell, S. 1 2 ,1 3 7 ,1 4 0 ,1 4 8 C olvin, S. 28, 32, 104, 115, 117, 121-2 C ook, A .B. 59 C ook, R .M . 160 C ope, E .M . 1 8 ,1 0 8 C o m fo rd , F. M . 9, 13, 104 C o u rtn ey , W .L . 30 C ow ell, F. 161

E dw ards, H.J. 38, 43 E vans, A. 140 F arrar, F. W . 20 F aw cett, H. 38 F inley, M .I. 164 F isher, H .A .L . 90 F ord, L .G .B .J. 39 Frazer, J.G . 1 0 4 -5 ,1 1 7 G ardner, R. 158 G iles, P. 162 G lover, T .R . 59, 128 G ray, H .B . 30 G reen, F.W . 1 3 5 ,1 3 8 -9 G rote, G. 18 G rote, J. 17 G uthrie, W .K .C . 163 H all w ard, B.L. 160 H are, J. C. 3 H arrison, J.E. 30, 53, 57, 60-1, 67, 70, 104, 1 2 3 ,1 3 1 H eadlam , W . G. 43 H ousm an, A. E. 6, 59, 161 Ivens, D. 5 4 ,5 9 ,6 3 ,6 7 Jackson, H. 26, 28, 32, 9 9 -100 , 102, 111-12, 124-5

176 Jam es, M .R . 28, 39 Jebb, R .C . 22, 32-3, 41, 77, 102, 116, 124-5 Jenkin, A .F. 32 Jenkin, H .C .F . 30

INDEX R ackham , H. 59 R am say, A .F. 48-9

K ennedy, B. H. 1 1 ,3 2 ,1 1 0 - 1 1 ,1 1 3 K eynes, J.M . 46

R andolph , J.H .G . 39 R icketts, C. 1 4 3 ,1 4 5 ,1 5 0 R idgew ay, W . 11, 82, 128, 137 R obertson , D .S. 162 S andys, J.E. 32, 117

L am b, W . 12, 135-56 p a s s im , 136 L am ont, N. 71

S chliem ann, H. 12, 116, 150 Scott, R. 46

L aw so n , J.C . 59

S eeley, J.R . 8

L eake, W .M . 1 3 5 ,1 4 6 L eathes, S. M . 39

S eltm an, C .T. 1 4 0 -1 ,1 5 3 S hannon, C. 1 4 3 ,1 5 0

L eavis, F.R . 14 L u m sd en , L. 57

S harpley, E. 53, 60, 62 S heppard, J.T. 4 5 -46, 59

L y ttelto n , L o rd 74, 79-80, 85 M acfarren , G. 34, 37

S idgw ick, H. 6-7, 12-13, 15-26 p a ss im , 5 5 ,8 1 ,8 8 , 108, 120

M agill, H. 5 4 ,6 3 M aitland, F. W . 8 8 ,9 2 M arlay, C.B . 147

S tanford, C .V . 32, 37, 39, 117 S tephen, J.K . 32 S teuart, E. 66

M atth aei, L. 57 M ayo, T. 127

T aylor, M . 66

M ayor, J.E .B . 57, 108-10, 124

T hirlw all, C. 3

M errifield , M . 5 3 ,5 7 ,6 0 M onk, J. H. 3

T hom pson , E .S. 25 T hom pson , W . H. 11 , 1 8

M oore, G .E. 25 M unro, H .A .J. 18

V ansittart, A .A . 6, 19, 106-7 V aughan W illiam s, R. 37

M urray, G .G .A . 104 N ew ton, C .T. 121 N icholls, R .V . 155 N ixon, J.E . 127 O ’C onnor, J. 34

V errall, A .W . 3 2 - 3 ,4 1 ,4 3 , 119 V on H ügel, F. 122 W ace, A .J.B . 141, 1 5 2

Jex -B lak e, K. 5 7 ,5 9 ,6 7

P a g e .T .E . 1 1 1 -1 2 ,1 1 4 P aley, F.A . 7 Parry, H. 3 7 ,3 9 P attison, M. 22, 121

16,

S tout, G.F. 25

W aldstein , C. 11, 31, 34-5, 1 1 7 -2 2 , 118, 131 W elsh, E. 5 7 , 5 9 W hew ell, W . 18 W ilkinson, L.P. 27 W illiam s, W .N . 59, 158 W illis, R. 31

P earson, A .C . 162

W ilson, F. 53

P e a rs o n , J.B . 107

W in te r, C . 154

Peile, J. 126 P enrose, A. 46 Platt, A. 67 P latts, C. 39 P ostgate, J. P. 6

W ood, C. 37 W ordsw orth, C. sr 2, 4 W ordsw orth, C. j r 5 W ynne W illson, St. J. B.

42