Tales from the Archives – Snapshots of Early Academic Life at Reading

October 1, 2024

London Road’s L16: ‘The Tech Block’

Building L16 at London Road houses Campus Reception and the students’ Support Centre; it is also the administrative hub of the Institute of Education.

Main entrance to L16 at London Rd, August 2024. The ceramic pot on the left is a recent acquisition, one of two standing outside L16, and one of three funded by The Friends of the University of Reading

When I joined the School of Education at London Road in September 1987, my office was on the first floor of L16. It nestled between the display area and the lecture room of the Reading and Language Information Centre (RALIC) run by Betty Root MBE.

On the ground floor was Modern Languages led by Gordon Shute and Art Education with Fraser Smith and his colleagues James Hall and Richard Hickman. Gordon Shute also ran the Short Courses Office in what is now Campus Reception.

September 1987: Modern Languages Seminar Room; it is now G04 containing the Support Centre Administration Team

My office was large enough to accommodate a seminar group of 12 students, quite a luxury for a new lecturer. None of the offices had a computer until we received a portable Amstrad in the summer of 1988. There was no network; everything was transferred on 3.5″ floppy disks.

September 1987, almost certainly the present-day Room 108

Originally, I thought my old office was today’s Room 110, but having compared the brickwork and partition walls of Rooms 108, 110 and 112, I now believe it to have been 108, and that the original Reading Centre lecture room has been divided to form 110 and 112. Whatever the case, present staff in these three offices no longer have the luxury of ‘a room of one’s own’ – each is shared by two or three staff.

September 1987: the present-day Room 108. Behind me is the Reading Centre kitchen.

In 1989 the University merged with Bulmershe College of Higher Education and the Faculty of Education and Community Studies was formed. At some stage following Education’s departure from London Road to Bulmershe Court these rooms on the first floor were occupied by the Centre for British Teachers, by coincidence my previous employer.

August 2024: Support Centre, formerly Art Education

‘The Tech Block’

Two people who remember lecturing in L16 even before it housed the School of Education are the microbiologists Dr John Grainger and Dr Gillian Roberts (now Dr Gillian Grainger). According to John, it was known as ‘The Tech Block’ as a result of its previous history as the location for Commerce and Technical Subjects:

‘By 1957 when I came to Reading the term ‘Tech Block’ for L16 seemed to have been part of tradition in the London Road vocabulary since whenever. I guess it emerged when ‘Commerce’ was no longer part of the activities in L16 and ‘Tech’ was less of a mouthful in conversation than ‘Technical Subjects’ or similar.’ (Dr John Grainger, August 2024)

John Grainger, who later became head of Microbiology before it was absorbed into the School of Animal and Microbial Sciences, recalled that during his time in L16 academic staff were still obliged to wear gowns during their lectures. By about 1970, however, when his wife Gill was lecturing there, this requirement had ceased.

It was only this year that I realised the logic behind the numbering of the buildings at London Road. The earliest map I have found that shows the numbers is from 1977 (see post of 16 January 2024). The sequence begins in the north-east corner of the campus and moves in a clockwise direction round the site. L16, therefore, was originally the 16th building to the south on the east side. Thanks to so many buildings being demolished or knocked into one, however, the sequence is less transparent today.

Origins

In 1904 Alfred Palmer gifted the University College the grounds on which the buildings along the east cloister were soon to be constructed. A map of that year published in the College’s Official Gazette describes the southeastern section where L16 was to be situated as the Palmer Family’s paddock.

Before Palmer’s gift, the area had been rented by the College and was variously referred to on site plans as ‘The College Garden (for Horticultural Teaching and Practice’ (Calendar, 1902-3) and ‘Horticultural Ground’ (Childs, 1933).

The original architects’ plan produced by W. Ravenscroft and C. S. Smith and presented to Dr Childs, the College Principal in 1904, was reproduced in the Students’ Handbook in 1907. L16 is the building on the far left and, uniquely, is unlabelled.

map — The original plan for the campus of 1904 by Ravenscroft & Smith, Architects

Following the site’s construction, the first map on which L16 is discernible is a ‘Sketch Plan of Reading Shewing University College’ published in the College Calendar in 1906. A close-up of the campus section can be seen here:

Extract — Detail from the ‘Sketch Plan of Reading Shewing University College’, 1906

Occupants of the Building

As noted above, L16 was unlabelled on the architects’ plan. However, architects’ notes received by the College in 1907 refer to a Geography building that isn’t to be seen on the original plan. This can only be L16:

‘GEOGRAPHY. This building contains 2400 square feet, and comprises two large rooms for the use of commercial and geographical classes, a large room for typographical teaching, and private rooms for members of staff.

The basement storey adjoins the agricultural building and comprises a large boiler house and coal store. Into this basement all gas, water and electric light supplies are brought. Here the meters are fixed, and thence supplies are taken via the creeping way to the whole of the new buildings on the site.’ (Ravenscroft & Smith, 1906, pp. 7-8).

Note that ‘adjoins’ here does not mean that the buildings were attached, but simply that they were in close proximity to each other, as can be seen on the architects’ plan.

Later campus maps give us further information:

- - A ‘Development Plan’ of 1911 published a year later in the College Review describes the building as the ‘Commerce and Technical Block’;
  - A ‘Plan of Buildings on the Main Site’ of 1926 shows the occupants to be ‘Geography Commerce Domestic & Technical Subjects’;
  - Two different plans from 1929, both labelled ‘Plan Showing Existing Buildings and Proposed Extensions’ use the label, ‘Commerce and Technical Subjects’ (University Gazette, 1929; Special Collections UHC – PLANS Box 1);
  - A ‘Plan of Buildings on the Main Site’ from the early 1930s published in Smith & Bott’s (1992) pictorial history of the University includes the word ‘Domestic’ for the first time: ‘Domestic and Technical Subjects’;
  - Holt’s (1977) history of the University includes ‘The development plan for London Road, 1944‘ showing ‘Technical Subjects’; in addition, the word ‘Commerce’ has been crossed out and replaced by ‘Agriculture’;
  - An undated plan that was in use in 1977 and was found in the Christine Pullein-Thompson Collection, show the building in use for ‘Fine Art’ and ‘Food Science’ – by this time most departments had moved to Whiteknights and London Road was occupied by just five main departments: The School of Education, Fine Art, Food Science, Microbiology and Soil Science.

With regard to the frequent references to Commerce, and Technical and Domestic Subjects, these curricular areas have their origin in the evolution of the University from the Extension College of 1892 and its amalgamation with the Local Schools of Art and Science. As Holt (1977) points out, much of the teaching in 1926 when the Royal Charter was granted, was not at a level associated with other, more established universities.

Out of 1,656 students at Reading, only 306 were reading for a degree, less than half the number of evening class students. Because there had been simply nowhere else for non-degree students to go, they and their courses were incorporated lock, stock and barrel into the University.

L16 and the War Effort (1914-18)

In his memoir W. M. Childs reported that:

‘Throughout the war period, the College and those still at work within it busied themselves with many kinds of public service. For example, large quantities of munitions were made, and many hundreds of munitions-workers were trained. We exerted ourselves to stimulate locally the production of food. Our Voluntary Aid Detachment set up a hospital through which passed more than 1300 wounded men ….’ (Childs, 1933, p. 218)

Annual reports of the period mention the Fine Art Department making ‘War Hospital appliances’ in the woodwork shop; Chemistry was making B[eta]-eucaine for the Admiralty, an early substitute for cocaine that was used as a local anaesthetic.

In 1916 it was noted that the training of munitions workers had been moved from the Physics building to larger rooms in the Commerce building (presumably L16) where new lathes, machines and an extra electric motor were installed. By the end of 1916, 157 men and women had been trained. During the course of their instruction they had produced 4,000 shell bases and 200 Maxim crosshead pins.

The Changing Shape of the Building

Today the shape of L16 is an almost perfect rectangle but it wasn’t always so. The image below shows the original plan and later changes to the east-facing wall (bottom right on each plan):

An early undated image in the Special Collections shows some differences from the modern building but these don’t correspond with the above diagrams, and, to date, I have been unable to find the documentation that explain these and subsequent alterations.

Early image of Acacia Rd — Undated image of ‘Acacias Road’ (University of Reading Special Collections)

The east wall has since lost its lower window, and the chimney has been replaced. A close-up taken in 2024 shows three generations of brickwork suggesting an extension or major reconstruction:

The join can be be seen more clearly on the north and south walls:

Thanks to:

Ian Burn, John and Gillian Grainger and Dennis Wood for their contributions to this post.

Sources

Childs, W. M. (1933). Making a university: an account of the university movement at Reading. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years. Reading: University of Reading Press.

Ravenscroft, W. & Smith C. S. (1906), Notes by the Architects on the New Hall and Buildings. Special Collections, Ref: C Box 1466.

Reading University Gazette. Vol. II. No. 2. March 21, 1929.

Smith, S. & Bott, M. (1992). One hundred years of university education in Reading: a pictorial history. Reading: University of Reading.

The Reading University College Review, Dec 1912, Vol V No. 13.

University College Reading. Calendars, 1902-3, 1906-7.

University College, Reading. Official Gazette. No 34. Vol. III. 22^ndFebruary, 1904.

University College, Reading. Reports of the Council, 1914-15, 1915-16, 1916-17.

University College Reading (1907). Students’ handbook. First issue: 1907-8.

University of Reading (1929). Plan Showing Existing Buildings and Proposed Extensions. Special Collections. ref: UHC – PLANS Box 1.

University of Reading Special Collections. Christine Pullein-Thompson Collection, Correspondence with Publishers, Granada: MS 5078/107.

August 23, 2024

Postscript to the Richard Strauss Letter

The question of why a letter from Richard Strauss’s dated 1942 should have been attached to a programme for ‘Lohengrin’ in Vienna in 1951 appeared to be answered by their joint relevance to the opera ‘Capriccio’.

Nevertheless, it seemed worth contacting the Theater an der Wien on the off-chance that someone there could confirm this interpretation or throw further light on the matter.

An email to the theatre on 30 July 2024 was forwarded to the relevant department, and their archivist, Renate Riedel, replied a week later. She reminded me that, in the chaos following the end of World War II and the destruction of the Vienna State Opera House, the Theater an der Wien was the temporary venue for the State Opera. She explained that the Theater an der Wien was itself in a very sorry state during post-war period, presumably hinting at a scarcity of records. She suggested that I direct my enquiry to the Vienna Theatre Museum and/or the archives of the State Opera.

An email to the Theatre Museum produced an immediate reply from two archivists, Daniela Franke and Christiane Mühlegger-Henhapel. Their tentative explanation was that the Strauss letter was ‘probably’ inserted into the programme for ‘Lohengrin’ by accident because, on the previous and following evenings, there had been performances of the theatre’s new production of ‘Capriccio’ conducted by Dr Karl Böhm, the very person to whom Strauss’s letter had been addressed. Dates of the relevant performances provided by the archivists are these:

- - Saturday 2nd June: Strauss’s Capriccio
  - Wednesday 6th June: Strauss’s Capriccio
  - Thursday 7th June: Wagner’s Lohengrin; attended by the Pullein-Thompson sisters
  - Tuesday 12th June: Strauss’s Capriccio

The archivists were also kind enough to photograph the programme and inserts for the performance of ‘Capriccio’ on 6 June that, as can be seen below, include the Strauss letter:

**Explanation for the Strauss Letter being attached to the ‘Lohengrin’ programme**

Accidental attachment of the Strauss letter to the ‘Lohengrin’ programme seems the most likely, but not the only possible explanation. It is also feasible that Christine, accompanied by Diana (or maybe Josephine) had attended performances of both ‘Capriccio’ (6th June) and ‘Lohengrin’ (7th June). A third possibility is that one of the sisters simply found the letter in the theatre on the 7th June and kept it as a souvenir.

Thanks

To Renate Riedel of the Theater an der Wien, and Daniela Franke and Christiane Mühlegger-Henhapel of the Theatermuseum in Vienna for their help and prompt responses to my enquiries.

August 20, 2024

A Letter from Richard Strauss

Few posts on this blog would have been possible without Reading University’s Special Collections and the assistance of its ever-helpful team of archivists and Reading Room assistants.

Occasionally, among the wealth of items in the collections something particularly interesting and unexpected turns up such as a sheaf of original signed letters by French author and Nobel laureate André Gide (1869-1951), or an unsigned copy of a letter from the composer Richard Strauss.

The latter is the topic of this post – Strauss’s letter is contained in a folder of theatre and concert programmes in the collection of Josephine Pullein-Thompson (1924-2014) who, together with her twin sisters Christine and Diana, was a children’s author best known for adventure stories featuring horses and ponies.

Contents of Folder MS 5120/116

Among Josephine’s many concert memorabilia there is a programme for the Vienna State Opera’s performances at the Theater an der Wien¹ in Vienna. The item is in three parts:

1. The programme itself which covers the whole 1950-51 concert season (there would have been a separate insert for each performance). It contains notifications of future events, photographs of a previous production of ‘Der Troubadour’ (Verdi’s ‘Il Travatore’), advertisements and a three-page extract from the libretto of Richard Strauss’s ‘Capriccio’. A handwritten note on the front cover reads: ‘On holiday with Christine’. Presumably this is Christine Pullein-Thompson, Josephine’s sister. We don’t know whether Christine’s holiday companion was her twin sister Diana or their older sister Josephine in whose archive the item was found. It is possible that it was sent to Josephine by Diana.

2. An insert for the performance of Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’ that took place on 7 June 1951. It contains the cast list and there is a synopsis of the plot on the back.

3. A copy of an unsigned letter from Richard Strauss to the conductor Karl Böhm. The address is simply ‘Garmisch’ and the date 3 June 1942.

It is not clear why a letter written in 1942 should accompany a theatre programme from 1951. A closer examination of both, however, reveals some common ground.

Content of the Letter

Strauss addresses Böhm as ‘Dear Friend’. He says he has no objection to Böhm staging ‘Capriccio’ in Dresden. In fact, he is all in favour of it. As far as a performance in Vienna is concerned, he would prefer to wait until the Theater an der Wien had reopened. He regarded this venue as the ideal place to stage operas such as ‘Capriccio’ and ‘Intermezzo’ rather than the Vienna State Opera House which was too big to enable an intimate understanding of the text. He relates this to Böhm’s anticipated move to the Vienna State Opera.

Strauss suggests that during the next winter, when Böhm would be back in Vienna, he should start working on Strauss’s ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’ [‘The Woman without a Shadow’] which was in urgent need of revival.

He says he will be in Berlin from 10 June onwards and hopes to have the pleasure of seeing Böhm at the premiere of a new production of Strauss’s three-act opera ‘Guntram’, on the 13th.

Some Context

- - Dr Karl Böhm (1894-1981) was regarded as a member of a golden age of German conductors that included, among others, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer. Böhm was a devotee of Strauss and his works, and had conducted the premieres of ‘Die schweigsame Frau’ [‘The Silent Woman’] in 1935 and ‘Daphne’ in 1938, which Strauss had dedicated to him. Eventually Böhm was to conduct ‘Capriccio’ in Zurich in 1944 and in Salzburg in 1950. At the time of Strauss’s letter to him he was Director of Music at the Dresden State Opera.
  - ‘Capriccio’ was Strauss’s final opera, completed several weeks after his letter to Böhm, and first performed in Munich in October 1942. It was produced by Rudolf Hartmann (mentioned in Strauss’s letter in relation to ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’) and conducted by the opera’s main librettist, Clemens Krauss. The premiere was sponsored by Joseph Goebbels, the Reich’s Minister of Propaganda. There is an irony here in that the original idea for ‘Capriccio’ had come from the Jewish author and librettist Stefan Zweig – their collaboration on ‘Die schweigsame Frau’ had previously brought Strauss into conflict with the authorities.²
  - The sender’s address is simply stated to be Garmisch. Strauss would have been writing from his spacious and secluded family villa in Garmisch-Patenkirchen, built by the composer during the first decade of the 20th Century, and at least partially funded by the success of ‘Salome’, a one-act opera first performed in 1905. He occupied it in 1908 and the villa became his alpine sanctuary from which he had easy access to Munich, Salzburg and Vienna. It was here that Richard Strauss and Clemens Krauss worked on the libretto of ‘Capriccio’.
  - ‘Guntram‘ was Strauss’s first opera, first performed in 1894 and revised in 1940 because of its lack of popularity.

Common Ground between the Letter and the Programme

It is clear from the above that there are two areas of overlap: the opera house itself and ‘Capriccio’.

As far as the opera house is concerned, the Theater an der Wien (mentioned in Strauss’s letter) was also the venue for Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’ that the Pullein-Thompson sisters must have attended in 1951. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, whereas in 1942 Vienna was blessed with both the Theater an der Wien and the Wiener Staatsoper (also mentioned in the letter), the latter had been partially destroyed by allied bombing in 1945, and during the 1950-51 season the State Opera was still being temporarily housed in the Theater an der Wien.

With regard to ‘Capriccio’, the opera is both the main topic of the letter as well as providing the programme with its lengthy quotation. The opera’s English subtitle is ‘A Conversation Piece for Music’, and its theme is whether Music or Poetry is supreme among the arts. The tension between the two is personified in an 18th-century French countess who is unable to decide between two suitors: a musician and a poet.

The importance of the audience being able to follow the arguments put forth in the dialogue made the Theater an der Wien, with its more intimate atmosphere, a more appropriate venue. The necessity of this was made clear in a preface to the opera dated April 1942, in which Strauss advised conductors and producers on rehearsal techniques that focused on clear diction.

**Why was the extract from ‘Capriccio’ included in the theatre programme?**

There are at least three reasons why the extract was appropriate for the programme of the 1951-52 season in Vienna: the success of ‘Capriccio’ and the popularity of its composer, the opera’s lack of any political overtones or propaganda, and the content of the extract itself.

The premiere of the opera in 1942 received approval from both critics and public. It was described as one ‘of the most successful novelties of the period’ (Levi, 1994, p. 189); the music was ‘light, colourful, and cheery, playfully ironic and uplifting’ (Kater, 2000, 172); it was ‘a masterpiece’, one of the few works of any quality that was produced during the war years – ‘the eloquence and fluency of [Strauss’s] work was extraordinary’ (Boyden, 1999, pp. 339-40); furthermore, ‘Capriccio is a glorious achievement, a testament to the tireless genius of its composer and the perfect work with which to celebrate his life in the theatre’ (Boyden, 1999, p. 345).

During the dark years of war, such uplifting music with its escapist theme provided a welcome relief, and Strauss’s public braved the blackout and air raids in Munich to attend the premiere. A decade later, the lack of any allusions to, or even connections with, recent history would have been entirely fitting in 1950s post-war Vienna.³

The extract in the programme is from Scene IX in the second half of the opera. It is a monologue spoken by the theatre director La Roche about the state of contemporary theatre. In it he berates the poet and the musician – what have they ever done for drama or music? Their works would be nothing without people like him! He deplores the state of modern drama and music: ‘Where are the works that speak to the hearts of the people? Where are they? No matter how hard I search I fail to find them. They mock the old and create nothing new.’ A few lines later La Roche speaks the sentence that forms the heading of the extract: ‘Ich will meine Bühne mit Menschen bevölkern’ [‘I want to fill my stage with real people’]. It continues: ‘…with people like us who speak our language! Their sorrows should move us and their joys touch us deeply.’

In his guide to ‘Capriccio’, Burton Fisher describes La Roche’s speech as ‘an impassioned sermon – a rhetorical homage to himself as the protector of the noble dignity of the theater’ (Fisher, 2010, p. 10). It is both a critique of contemporary theatre and his vision for a theatre of the future that would have been just as relevant to the Vienna of 1950-51 as it had been to the Munich of 1942.⁴

Conclusion

Either Josephine Pullein-Thompson or her sister Diana (possibly the latter) had accompanied their sister Christine to the Theater an der Wien in 1952. It is not entirely clear, however, why Strauss’s letter dated 1942 should be in Josephine’s archive. The most likely explanation is that the theatre management inserted it into the programme because of its relevance to La Roche’s speech, itself a manifesto for the theatre, and because Strauss’s letter speaks favourably of the Theater an der Wien as a venue for operas like ‘Capriccio’.⁵

Notes

1. ‘Wien’ is German for Vienna, but in the name of the theatre it refers to the river on whose banks it is situated.
2. Strauss had a complex relationship with the Nazi regime. He never joined the Party, but in 1933 he dedicated a song for voice and piano, ‘Das Bächlein’ [‘The Little Stream’], to Goebbels that was also a homage to Hitler. In the same year he was appointed Director of the Reichsmusikkammer where one of his duties was the suppression of ‘degenerate art’ in favour of ‘Aryan’ music. He was dismissed in 1935 as a result of his collaboration with the Jewish author Stefan Zweig. Strauss was vulnerable because of a Jewish daughter-in-law and two Jewish grandchildren, but his strength was his national and international reputation and the fact that the regime needed him. In 1948 a denazification court found him innocent of wrongdoing.
3. This lack of connection to contemporary events did not prevent later performances being relocated from 18th Century France to 1940s Germany. A production in Munich in 2022 was set in the Third Reich and contained allusions to racism, deportation and surveillance. According to a rather uncomplimentary review by Gohlke (2022) such references to the past added nothing worthwhile.
4. In addition, both of the reviews of the 2022 Munich production draw attention to its topical relevance.
5. The only doubt about this interpretation is that discoloration at the top of the sheet suggests that, at some stage, sticky tape has been attached; there is no corresponding mark on the programme, however. The marks look too uneven to have been caused by other factors such as exposure to light (see image above).

Sources

Boyden, M. (1999). Richard Strauss. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Fisher, B. D. (2010). Capriccio: opera journeys mini guide series. Boca Raton, Fla.: Opera Journeys Publishing.

Gohlke, C. (2022, July). Strauss’ “Capriccio” an der Bayrischen Staatsoper. Neues Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände. Retrieved July 20, 2024 from, https://neuesmorgenblatt.de/beitrag/strauss-capriccio-br-staatsoper

Graydon, P. (2011). Opera after Hofmannsthal. In C. Youmans (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Richard Strauss (pp. 136-150). Cambridge: CUP.

Heublein, F. (2022, July). “Oh – in Ihrem Salon vergehen die Stunden, ohne dass die Zeit älter wird. Frau Gräfin!” Klassik begeistert: der Klassik-Blog. Retrieved July 20, 2024, from https://klassik-begeistert.de/richard-strauss-capriccio-prinzregententheater-muenchen-17-juli-2022-premiere/

Kater, M. H. (1997). The twisted muse: musicians and their music in the Third Reich. Oxford: OUP.

Kater, M. H. (2000). Composers of the Nazi era: eight portraits. Oxford: OUP.

Levi, E. (1994). Music in the Third Reich. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Macleod, D. (Presenter). (2024, July 4). Composer of the Week: Strauss, 4/5 Riding with the Reich [Radio broadcast]. BBC Radio 3.

Osborne, C. (1988). The complete operas of Strauss: a critical Guide. London: Grange Books.

Richard Strauss. (2024, July 15). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Strauss

Strauss, R. (1942). Libretto von Capriccio. https://opera-guide.ch/operas/capriccio/libretto/de/

University of Reading Special Collections. Theatre and concert programmes collected by [Josephine] Pullein-Thompson, MS 5120/116.

July 14, 2024July 14, 2024

Rescue and Preservation of ‘Meteor’, Sculpture by Dr Jon Roberts

Meteor is one of a series of wood sculptures by Dr Jon Roberts. It was an instantly recognisable feature of the Harris Garden until it was subjected to an act of vandalism at the beginning of this year.

Jenny Halstead’s book ‘An artist’s year in the Harris Garden’ (2013) contains three images of the piece. She describes her impression of it and its location:

‘the White Garden with Jon Roberts’s wooden sculpture ‘Meteor’ at its centre, which always reminds me of the skull of Triceratops.’ (p. 6).

I think I first encountered ‘Meteor’ in Jenny Halstead’s garden during the annual Whiteknights Studio Trail in June 2007.

Meteor in Jenny Halstead’s garden during the Studio trail, June 2007

In a recent interview in the MERL garden, Jon told me something of its history. He started with the origin of the wood.

A friend of a neighbour had inherited a sheep farm in mid-Wales, where the top of the hillside was littered with tree roots following earlier felling of larch and oak trees. The roots had been lying there, weathering for 40 years and, in Jon’s words, they had developed ‘wonderful natural shapes’.

Following a preliminary reconnaissance trip to mid-Wales, Jon and his son Dan rented a van and loaded it with some 12-15 roots, enough for Jon to work on sculptures of all shapes and sizes for at least three years.

The farmer was given a generous payment.

Most of the roots needed little attention, just cleaning up, mounting and the provision of plinths.

The piece of wood selected for Meteor was a product of the thin soil, resulting in the root spreading out in a fan shape, finally leaving a flat, distorted disc embedded with fragments of slate.

Tentative plans to turn it into a coffee table came to nothing and Jon bided his time, spending months contemplating the shape and making minimal changes. When first cut, the larch wood displayed an intense deep red colour (see image below). The wood was brittle but hard (larch wood had once been used for pit props ) and Jon used gouges to produce the surface pattern (see image) and a handmade French Auriou rasp to shape the curves and edges. The wood was too brittle for a heavy mallet so a light alternative was used instead.

Close-up of the larch wood showing the grain, gouge marks and its original deep red colouring, December 2007

Meteor’s plinth was from an entirely different source; it was originally part of a tidal groyne in Swanage that was being replaced. It was made of greenheart, a tropical hardwood that is extremely hard, heavy and resistant to water and insect damage. Jon heard that the wood was to be thrown away and contacted the site engineer for permission to remove a piece.

In May 2011, I saw the sculpture in the Harris Garden for the first time. It was in what was then called The White Garden. In 2015 this became The Meteor Garden thanks to generous sponsorship from the Friends of the Harris Garden and a layout designed by volunteers.

Jon Roberts with Meteor in the Harris Garden in May 2011

By 2013, some of the deep red colouring had started to look more weathered:

And by 2020 it had almost completely faded:

Then early in 2024, a senseless piece of vandalism snapped the sculpture off its plinth and broke off one its edges. Fortunately all the pieces were salvaged and safely stored by the Grounds Staff.

The base that had been attached to the plinth, February 2024

Even better is the news that, thanks to the help of staff in Art Education on the London Road Campus, Meteor is being relocated. On 10 July this year, it was delivered into the safe-keeping of Dr Suzy Tutchell of the Institute of Education who is arranging for its repair and a new plinth.

Jon Roberts and Meteor outside the Art Education Building (L4) at London Road, July 2024

Post Script

Regular visitors to the Harris Garden will probably have been aware of another piece by Jon Roberts that he called his ‘Natural Sculpture’. It is another of the hillside roots. The image below shows it in its heyday in 2011. Over the years, however, it has suffered from the natural process of disintegration and collapse, such that little remains of its original shape although its components can still be made out in the undergrowth.

Jon Roberts in the Harris Garden with his ‘Natural Sculpture’, May 2011

Jenny Halstead’s Book

Halstead, J. (2013). An artist’s year in the Harris Garden. Reading: Two Rivers Press.

April 24, 2024June 21, 2024

In Memory of Jessie Durbidge, B.A. (1905-1927)

Jessie Durbidge was a former student of University College, Reading and a teacher at Alfred Sutton Primary School. She died tragically of influenza in 1927 at the age of 21.

Jessie became a focus of interest as a result of recent research conducted by Professor Yota Dimitriadi and others into the burials in Reading Old Cemetery. Unfortunately, Jessie’s grave is unmarked and the precise location is unknown at present.

Jessie’s short life was recently commemorated on the cemetery website by Dr Rhi Smith of Reading University’s Museums and Special Collections Services. Dr Smith’s biography of Jessie can be found here.

Some additional information about her is contained in the University’s Special Collections and in the archives of Kendrick School.

Reading’s Special collections

Details of Jessie’s time as a student are fairly sparse – the annual report of the University College for 1923-24 states that she passed the Intermediate Arts Examination of the University of London in July 1924. And the Proceedings of the University for 1926-27 shows her degree from the University of London as ‘B.A., November, 1926. Pass, Division II.’

Jessie belonged to one of the last cohorts of students at Reading who were entered for external degrees because their enrolment preceded the granting of the Royal Charter in 1926.

The short obituary below was published in the Old Student News in April 1927, part of a list that shows she wasn’t the only former student who failed to recover from an attack of influenza.

Old Students obit — Death notice published in Reading’s Old Student News.

Kendrick school

The archives of Kendrick School are a richer source of information thanks to the preservation of copies of the Kendrick Girls’ Magazine and the records of those leaving the school.

example of the magazine — School magazine from 1922 (the archives of Kendrick School)

Under the heading ‘Prefects’ Notes’, Jessie’s appointment as the new Head Girl was recorded in the Summer 1922 issue. A few pages later there appears an enthusiastic review of a charity concert written by a J. Durbidge. The event had taken place in St John’s Hall and had raised £15 in aid of the East Reading Day Nursery.

In Autumn 1923, a paragraph in the magazine’s editorial recorded Jessie’s move into higher education:

‘We are pleased to have good news of our former head girl… Jessie Durbidge is working for Intermediate Arts at University College, Reading, her subjects being English, History, Latin and Mathematics… we send our best wishes for the coming year.’

The same opening page documents Jessie’s success in the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate and contains the following ‘Prefects’ Notes’:

‘We were very sorry to lose, at the end of last term, our Head Girl, Jessie Durbidge, and our Deputy Head Girl, Muriel Beasley, both of whom held office for five terms.’

Jessie’s final leaving record is shown below. It shows that she was a day-scholar who progressed to Kendrick in the Autumn of 1916 from Battle Primary School. Before her success in the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate noted above, she had achieved Class I Honours in the Senior Oxford Examination in 1921.

Edited final record

Following her death, this obituary was published in the school magazine in the summer of 1927:

‘On March 25th, at Marlborough Nursing Home, Jessie Durbidge, B. A., of 16, Gloucester Road, aged 21.

It is with the deepest regret that we record the passing of Jessie Durbidge, who had been so helpful to the School as a Prefect and Head Girl prior to 1923, and from 1923-1926 was a Student at Reading University. In November last she had graduated as B.A., and had been appointed to Alfred Sutton Junior School.

Jessie had served on the Old Kendrick’s Committee since January 1924, and a wreath was sent in the name of O.K.G.A. friends and committee, in memory of one who had served the Association so happily and helpfully.’

It was not possible to identify Jessie on a school photograph of the time, but the enlarged section of an image from 1919 below shows how she and her fellow pupils might have looked during that period.

Detail of school photo — From the archives of Kendrick School

Thanks to:

Dr Emma Duncan of Kendrick School who searched the school archives for references to Jessie, and to the School for permission to quote from these sources and reproduce them here;

Dr Rhianedd Smith, Director of Academic Learning and Engagement, University Museums and Special Collections Services, University of Reading;

Professor Yota Dimitriadi of the Institute of Education, University of Reading. A book edited by Yota about Reading Old Cemetery is due to be published soon by Two Rivers Press. The provisional title is ‘Beyond the Arch’.

Sources

Kendrick School. Kendrick Girls’ Magazine, Summer Term 1922.

Kendrick School. Kendrick Girls’ Magazine, Autumn Term 1923.

Kendrick School. Kendrick Girls’ Magazine, Summer Term 1927.

The University, Reading. Old Student News, No. 13, April 1927.

University College, Reading. Accounts & Reports, 1923-24.

University of Reading. Proceedings of the University, 1926-27.

February 27, 2024February 29, 2024

Every Woman’s Encyclopædia and Fine Arts at Reading

‘The notion that an art student is a reckless creature, unable to handle any implement other than a pencil or brush, is sternly discouraged.’ (Article about Fine Arts at University College, Reading, Every Woman’s Encyclopædia, 1910, p. 2838)

This blog recently described the buildings and location of the Department of the Fine Arts on the London Road Campus. At times, it has also mentioned members of the Fine Arts Department such as Robert Gibbings, the celebrated wood engraver, underwater artist and travel writer, and Allen W. Seaby.

This post looks at the Department in 1910 when Seaby was still a lecturer. though he was soon to become Director of the Department and eventually Professor of Fine Art. A product of the Department himself, having obtained his Diploma in 1903, he made an impressive contribution to the culture of the College and University. Previous posts have referred to Seaby’s design of the bookplate for St Andrew’s Hall, his early educational research, the picture of the Great Hall by moonlight, sketches of the grebes on Whiteknights Lake and his participation in the Farm School.

An Encyclopaedia Entry

In 1910, Every Woman’s Encyclopaedia published a four-page entry about Reading’s Fine Arts Department.

heading

The article must have been a triumph of publicity for both the College and the Department. Information was provided about fees, hostels for women students (‘the dietary is under medical inspection’) and staffing of the Department. There was praise for the well-stocked library and attention was drawn to the athletic ground and the common room where art students socialised with those studying a wide range of other subjects. The way that Fine Arts was successfully integrated within a well-developed higher education programme was described as ‘unique’.

One advantage of this was that art students had access to classes in other subjects. It also supplied them with a wide variety of subjects to draw and paint. Horticulture and Botany, for example, provided facilities for the flower painter and, ‘The animal painter … has access to the zoology professor and his museum’ (p. 2839; i.e. the Cole Museum).

greenhouse — Students making botanical drawings ‘direct from Nature’. (p. 2839)

Using animals, even horses, as subjects obviously formed a highly significant part of the Department’s work:

‘The study of animal painting and modelling from life is another branch of the training. A collection of small animals and a number of birds are kept specially on the premises to act as models. They are placed in pens on the grass in the centre of the class on sunny days, and, in bad weather or in winter time, in cages in one of the studios.’ (p. 2840)

The curriculum included life classes that used professional models from London, and there was an emphasis on drawing from memory. One drawing-based craft such at etching, illuminating or colour printing was compulsory. Apparently, Reading was one of the rare institutions that taught colour printing using wood blocks. Other crafts included stained-glass work, artistic metalwork, leather work, wood carving, bookbinding and embroidery.

One thing that seems strange is that allowing students to use colour rather than just drawing in black and white was apparently rather daring:

‘The more elementary students are often allowed to express their ideas of objects placed before them in colour, and as is now slowly being recognised, such colour exercises keenly stimulate their sense of form.’ (p. 2839)

Of particular importance was the fact that the Department was recognised by the Board of Education as a centre for teacher training. As well as the Department’s own Diploma, therefore, students could qualify as art teachers in primary or secondary schools. It also gave them access to prizes and scholarships offered by the Board.

The entry provides a broad and entirely positive overview of the Department. There are inaccuracies, however – a minor but understandable error is the confusion between the University Extension College (formed in 1892) and University College, Reading (1902). What must have been more annoying at the time is the misspelling of Allen Seaby’s name as ‘Sealy’.

One discrepancy that I can’t explain is that Seaby, rather than Professor Collingwood, was described as Director of Fine Arts. According to the annual report for 1910-11, however, Seaby was not appointed Director until Collingwood’s resignation at Easter, 1911. All the other members of the Department who were listed in that year’s Calendar were mentioned in the article, including Walter Crane the Visiting Examiner.

The Curriculum as Presented in the College Calendar (1910-11)

The Calendar contains details of the scheme of work, the classes available, and regulations for the Diploma in Fine Art and Certicates in the various Crafts.

The curriculum was organised under groups of studies:

- - Drawing, Painting and Modelling.
  - Architecture.
  - The Artistic Handicrafts.
  - Design.
  - Methods of Teaching.

To qualify for the Diploma, students had to follow courses for no less than nine terms and perform satisfactorily in three out of five of the following: Drawing, Modelling, Painting, Design and Composition. In addition, they had to pass an examination in one subject from the Associate Examination in Letters and Science which they attended for one session.

Certificates courses lasted one session and were available in Metalwork, Wood Carving, Emboidery and Leather Work.

The School of Art’s New premises in 2023

In 1910 Fine Art was located in Building L4 at London Road, where Art Education can still be found today.

In the mean time, the University of Reading’s School of Art has come a long way from the original Department of Fine Arts. In 2023 it moved from Earley Gate to purpose-built premises close to the Pepper Lane entrance to the Campus.

entrance — The School of Art, January 2024

Distant, front

side

Thanks

To Richard Keefe for passing on the extract from Every Woman’s Encyclopaedia.

Sources

University College, Reading: the Fine Arts Department. Every Woman’s Encyclopaedia, Vol. 4, 1910, pp. 2838-2841.

University College, Reading. Calendars, 1909-10 to 1911-12.

University College, Reading. Report to Council, 1911.

February 9, 2024

Elspeth Huxley and Reading: fact versus fiction

‘Writers must learn pretty quickly to disguise what they’re doing if they don’t want to end up in the libel courts.’ (Val McDermid, 2023)

My previous post about Elspeth Huxley dealt with her time at Reading as it was portrayed in the book, ‘Love among the Daughters’. Her description of Reading and the London Road Campus was far from flattering.

The reviews and notices of the work label it ‘non-fiction’ even though it bears many characteristics of a novel. In the Evening News of 26th Sept. 1968 it was already listed fourth in the non-fiction best sellers; the following month it was ranked first, ahead of Kim Philby’s ‘My Silent War: the Autobiography of a Spy’ (there are those who claim that this contained elements of fiction, too). And in an interview with The Times on 16th September 1968, Huxley described it as autobiography. Nevertheless, it is generally regarded as an example of ‘fictionalised autobiography’, a genre in which changes to details of real people, places and events do not detract from the authenticity of the account.

There are several reasons to question the accuracy of the narrative:

- a gap of over 40 years between the events described and publication;
- changes calculated to avoid offending people who were still alive;
- exaggeration and caricature for comic effect (the humour is a recurring theme of the book reviews; Christine Nichols, Huxley’s biographer, regarded it as one of her wittiest books);
- Huxley’s own statements about her recollections;
- discrepancies with historical records.

In August 1968 Huxley was interviewed on BBC Woman’s Hour by Marjorie Anderson. Here she gave a far more nuanced explanation of ‘autobiography’ than in her Times interview:

‘Well, it’s an autobiography in a sense, but it’s more of a recreation, more of a reconstruction of the period and of the impressions one had of life at that age than it is a chronological series of actual events. I don’t pretend to remember conversations which one had forty years ago, so one recreates the conversations, trying to make them true to the people one was conversing with – I mean one tries to create the atmosphere, but it’s much more of a creation of atmosphere than a chronicle.’ (Recorded 9th August 1968; broadcast 18th September 1968).

She further revealed that she never kept a diary but did have some notes that she made at Cornell and some old photographs.

Huxley’s Family

Elspeth stayed with her aunt, uncle and cousins on arrival in England and during the vacations. Although these periods have little relevance to her time in Reading, the treatment of her relatives illustrates her approach.

Gertrude, Kate and Joanna are the children of Aunt Madge and Uncle Jack. They are Elspeth’s cousins and ‘the daughters’ of the book’s title. All the above names are pseudonyms, as is the case with other relatives and acquaintances.

Cousin Gertrude is a superficial 1920s flapper; Kate got herself expelled from her convent school for various crimes such as running a book on racehorses; Joanna, the youngest, attends a ‘smart’ school in Suffolk; Aunt Madge descends into weeks-long silent sulks; and the idiosyncratic, bigoted Uncle Jack seems angry, disapproving and withdrawn except when reminiscing about his regiment.

These caricatures are accompanied by other family members such as Aunt Lilli and Uncle Rufus (a less well-suited couple it is hardly possible to imagine), not to mention the bottom-pinching Lord Fulbright who insists on taking young women skating, and the withered Russian countess with a constipated parrot that attacks people’s ankles.

It is in such stereotypes, and those of some of the personalities at Reading, that much of the humour lies. It must be said, however, that some of the witty features that thrilled the critics of 1968 are far less hilarious for the modern reader – Lord Fulbright comes across as a sinister predator rather than an amiable eccentric; the casual racism and antisemitism in language and attitudes, the snobbery and patronising colonial attitudes, even if they accurately reflect and satirise the views of a particular section of society in the 1920s, can still come as a shock.

In ‘Elspeth Huxley: a biography‘, Christine Nicholls documents the extent to which changes had to be made to avoid offending living family members. In particular, the real-life Joanna didn’t want her daughter to know about her youthful indiscretions. Joanna’s adventurous character was therefore transferred to Kate, and references to drugs, illegitimacy and an abortion were deleted.

Reading and the College/University

In his master’s thesis, Richard Keefe confirms some details in the book, but also notes factual errors: the number of Women’s halls of residence, the size of the student population and the ratio of male to female students. Huxley claimed that ‘Girls were in the fortunate position of being heavily outnumbered by men’ (p. 48), whereas in fact the opposite was true. This misconception, which was perpetuated in the book reviews, and even her biography, must have resulted from Huxley’s experience among predominantly male Agriculture students.

Elspeth’s gloomy perception of the campus and its buildings contrasts sharply with that of Edith Morley (‘These extensive and beautifully laid out grounds’, 1944/2016, p. 111) and with the ambition of W. M. Childs, Reading’s first Vice-Chancellor, ‘to make a place of sojourn for impressionable youth’ (1933, p. 51). In his history of the first 50 years of Reading University, J. C. Holt (1977) concludes that Huxley’s views could be neither ignored nor dismissed – an objective judgement was impossible.

However, in the BBC interview, when Marjorie Anderson queried the dreariness of Reading and the wisdom of educating young people in dreary surroundings, Huxley appeared to attribute this to the town rather than the University:

‘Oh I don’t think I found it dreary myself. I thoroughly enjoyed it.’

Huxley’s Fellow Students

The pseudonyms of the students who figure most centrally are:

- Dando: female, a Dairying student who played lacrosse;
- Thomas: male ‘an athlete and a hockey star’, Dando’s friend;
- Snugg: female, a third-year student, housemate of Huxley;
- Turner: male, Rugger Captain, Snugg’s friend;
- Corbett: male, Cricket Captain;
- Viney: male, captain in the Officers Training Corps, and member of the University’s rowing eight;
- Swift: female, Fine Arts student, housemate of Huxley;
- Abdul: male, studying Commerce, Swift’s friend, described as ‘a swarthy, sleek-haired Oriental of some kind’, p. 59); the only foreign student, and the only student referred to by his first name;
- Nash: male, member of the Dramatic Society and Labour Club – an outsider because of his politics and background.

Thomas, Turner, Corbett and Viney made up the self-styled Philosophers Club, an all-male clique who ‘sat together in the Buttery, drank together in the pub, … shared a boat on the river, [went on] jaunts to London to see a show.’ (p. 53).

Following a careful analysis of student records and having spotted how Huxley transposed letters in people’s names, Richard Keefe is confident that he has identified the students on which the characters of Snugg and Turner were based.

Of Snugg, Huxley writes that she:

‘… gave herself airs, and was apt to introduce into conversations topics like hunt balls, point-to-points, first nights, presentations at court and cousins in the Foreign Office’ (p. 51).

All of which was greeted with scepticism because she came from Birmingham. Richard Keefe suggests that the real Snugg was Marjorie Hope Scutt, born in 1906, a student of Fine Art (Diploma), Embroidery (Certificate) and Leatherwork (Certificate).

Huxley sums up Turner as:

‘… not only lord of the [Rugby] Fifteen but he was reading agriculture, had a job lined up in the colonies, held office in the Students’ Union, and was said to drink a lot of beer ; so he was one of the social princes. (p. 50).

Turner was due to spend the next year in Trinidad as training for the Colonial Service and is identified by Keefe as George R. Parker, a Wantage Hall student (1924-26).

Turner’s intended career seems typical of what Huxley claims for the majority of agriculture students at Reading – they would never dirty their hands ploughing or hoeing, but would join local authorities or become agricultural officers and District Commissioners somewhere in the Empire, enjoying the benefits of servants, plenty of leave, good pay and a generous pension after only 25 years.

The Academic Staff

While it takes detective work to identify the students in the book, Huxley’s lecturers in the Agriculture Department are immediately recognisable. One, Professor Sidney Pennington, is even mentioned by his real name – there was no need for a pseudonym because she held him in high regard – he was a practical person who could turn his hand to real farm work. This should not surprise us as, before his promotion, the College had appointed him farm manager in 1914.

One observation that finds an echo in the University’s Photographic Collection is that ‘the professor was accompanied everywhere by a small and shaggy white terrier’ (p. 69).

Shows the dog — Prof Sidney Pennington with his West Highland terrier *on Lane End Farm, Shinfield (*University of Reading Special Collections)

Huxley’s other lecturer was ‘Our Dean’, unnamed but obviously H. A. D. Neville, professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Dean of Agriculture since 1920. He is not named in the book, presumably because his description is less complimentary:

‘… a small, squat, ugly, rather savage Midlander who taught biochemistry, spitting out the formulae as if they had been so many oaths …’ (p. 116).

The Intermingling of Fact and Fiction

According to Huxley’s biographer, the detail in ‘Love among the Daughters’ cannot be entirely trusted:

‘What Elspeth did was to portray locations accurately, but conceal the truth about events and people who were still alive. She would often transfer a remembered incident to a different time, and always amalgamated or distorted characters so that there was no danger of libel.’ (Nichols, 2002, p. 82)

Nevertheless, as Antonia Fraser suggested in the Sunday Times (22nd September 1968), Huxley skilfully negotiated the blending of fact and fiction such that the reader understood far more of the social history of the period than through academic study.

Acknowledgements

Thanks also to Penguin Random House for permission to access the Review File for ‘Love among the Daughters’ and to use the quotations from the Woman’s Hour interview.

Many thanks to Richard Keefe for giving me a copy of his master’s thesis.

Sources

Childs, W. M. (1933). Making a university: an account of the university movement at Reading. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years. Reading: University of Reading Press.

Huxley, E. J. (1968). Love among the daughters. London: Chatto & Windus.

Keefe, R. (2022). History, Big Data and changes in the University of Reading / University College Reading’s Student Population over time (1908-1972). Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Reading.

McDermid, V. (2023). Past lying. London: Sphere.

Morley, E. J. (2016). Before and after: reminiscences of a working life (original text of 1944 edited by Barbara Morris). Reading: Two Rivers Press.

Nichols, C. S. (2002). Elspeth Huxley: a biography. London: Harper Collins.

University College Reading, Calendar, 1925-6.

University of Reading, Calendars, 1926-27 & 1927-28.

University of Reading Special Collections. Review file for ‘Love among the Daughters’ by Elspeth Huxley. Reference number: CW R/4/40 [also containing interviews with the author and BBC broadcasts – BBC copyright content is reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved].

University of Reading Special Collections. University History MS 5305 Photographs – Portraits Boxes 1 & 2.

January 26, 2024January 26, 2024

Marianne Grünfeld: Reading University Student and Victim of the Holocaust

This post for Holocaust Memorial Day was suggested by Richard Keefe as a tribute to Marianne Grünfeld. Richard sent me the article from ‘Reading Reading’ on which much of the post is based.

Marianne Grünfeld was a Horticulture Student at Reading in the 1930s. She had been born into a German family in Katowice, Poland in 1912 and referred to herself as an ‘Upper Silesian’.

She had relatives in England and arrived here in about 1936 to study for the Diploma in Horticulture at the University of Reading. There are some discrepancies over exact dates but, according to the University Calendars of the 1930s, diplomas were usually two-year courses unless a student stayed on for an extra year for a distinction. Records of degree results show Marianne passing her Diploma (Division II) in 1938. I have found no record of further study.

Marianne’s degree result in the Proceedings of the University, 1937-38

Guernsey

Following her graduation, Marianne answered an advertisement in an agricultural journal and went to work on the Duvaux Farm at St Sampson on the island of Guernsey in 1940.

Her family and her employer were aware that she was exposing herself to danger by doing so, but she was happy there and never took the opportunity to return to England before the German invasion of the Channel Islands in June 1940.

Marianne had not declared that she was Jewish when she registered for an identity card, but one way or another, the authorities found out, and she was interrogated in 1941 and again in April 1942. Although her employer, Edwin Ogier, tried to intercede on her behalf he was unable to protect her. Together with two other Jewish women, Therese Steiner and Auguste Spitz, she was deported to Laval in the north of France where she was formally arrested and removed to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in July 1942.

None of the three women survived, although details of their deaths are not known.

‘Remember Marianne?’

In 1988 Marianne was remembered in an article in ‘Reading Reading’, the magazine of the University of Reading Society and the Friends of the University.

Cropped close-up — Image of Marianne, centre of middle row, with fellow students, 1939 (published in Reading Reading, Autumn 1968, p. 11 – University of Reading Special Collections)

The tribute had the title ‘Remember Marianne?’ and it recalled that she had lived in St Andrew’s Hall and been given the nickname ‘Grundie’. Her contemporaries described her as being:

‘… rather reserved – a strong character, who seemed to enjoy student life in her own quiet way, going to meetings of societies which interested her and generally just being one of the crowd.’

Sources

Carr, G. Marianne Ilse Hanna Grunfeld. The Frank Falla Archive, Guernsey. Retrieved 19 January 2024: https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/people/marianne-grunfield/

University of Reading. Calendar, 1937-38.

University of Reading. Proceedings of the University, 1937-38.

Wither, R. (1988). Remember Marianne? Reading Reading, Autumn 1988, p.11.

January 16, 2024January 16, 2024

A Book Fair, a Children’s Author and a Map of the Campus

On the 7th July 1977, the University of Reading hosted the William Smith’s Children’s Book Fair. The venue was the Great Hall on the London Road Campus.

Details of this can be found in the archive of Christine Pullein-Thompson in the University’s Special Collections. Christine, together with her twin sister Diane and older sister Josephine was a children’s author, renowned for her popular pony stories. The Pullein-Thompson sisters were local to the area, having grown up in the village of Peppard in Oxfordshire where they lived in a house with its own stables. They were riding horses and writing stories about them from an early age.

Christine lived from 1925 to 2005 and was the most prolific of the three sisters, producing over 100 books with translations into 12 languages.

The Book Fair

On 12th May 1977 Granada Publishing Ltd., Christine’s publisher, wrote to her address in Middle Assendon, Henley. They had arranged for her to attend the Children’s Book Fair in Reading in July, and enclosed maps of the location of the University and the position of the Great Hall at London Road.

She was to conduct a ‘guess the weight of the pony articles’ competition, with Granada supplying 50 of her books as prizes. There would also be ‘further stock available for direct sale.’

header only — University of Reading Special Collections

The Map of the Campus

The plan of the London Road Campus in 1977 was new to me. I find it interesting because it is a previously missing link between the pre-Whiteknights maps of the 1930s and ’40s and my own memories of the site from when I joined the School of Education in 1987.

unedited original — Plan of the London Road Campus adapted for the Children’s Book Fair of July 1977 (University of Reading Special Collections)

This is also the first map I have seen that includes numbered buildings. And most of them bear the same numbers as today (L16, L19, L22, L33, etc.). This original numerical system counted in a roughly clockwise direction beginning with the Works Department in the top right hand corner and ending with Acacias (L43, the Senior/Staff Common Room), and L44, commonly known as ‘The Dolls’ House’.

If this numbering system seems less obvious now it is because many buildings no longer exist or are no longer occupied by the University – the Buttery (Building 34 between the Great Hall and L33) burnt down in 1982 and along London Road, the Old Red Building and Portland place have become private accommodation.

cropped — The ‘New’ Buttery that burnt down in 1982 (University of Reading Special Collections)

Some other adjustments had to be made too. For example, Fine Art Buildings 4.1, 6 and 7 are now, in 2024, occupied by Art Education and bear the single designation, L4.

detail — Detail of the eastern side of the site. Today, Art Education is housed in Buildings 4, 4.1 & 7 (now L4)

In earlier maps of the 1930s and 40s, Buildings 4 and 7 had been separated by a garden and labelled Fine Art and Zoology respectively; building 4.1 that linked them had yet to be constructed. Buildings 3, 5 and 8 on the map have all disappeared.

L4 today — Art Education (L4), situated at the northern end of the East Cloister, January 2024

Other notable absences from today’s campus that must be especially salient for members of the Institute of Education are the two Food Science buildings between L16 and L19, and the Fine Art block between L16 and L22. The full extent of demolitions can be seen below.

The buildings marked in blue have since been demolished

Consequences of the move to Whiteknights

The purchase of Whiteknights Park by the University had been completed in 1947. Building on the site began in 1954 and in 1957 Queen Elizabeth II performed the official opening of the Faculty of Letters, now the Edith Morley Building.

The effect of the gradual migration of departments from London Road to the new campus can be visualised in the version below of the 1977 map. The site was now dominated by five departments: The School of Education, Fine Art, Food Science, Microbiology and Soil Science.

coloured version — A version of the 1977 plan showing occupation by a small number of departments following completion of buildings at Whiteknights

The School of Education had been founded in 1969 through the amalgamation of the regional Institute of Education, established in 1948, and the University’s Department of Education. It is possible that at least one of the buildings labelled Fine Art was, in fact, devoted to Art Education. This was certainly the case in 1987 when part of the ground floor of L16 was occupied by Fraser Smith and his fellow Art Education colleagues James Hall and Richard Hickman.

Sources

Gillet, C. R. E. (1949). Reading Institute of Education. In H. C. Barnard (Ed.), The Education Department through fifty years (pp. 45-47). University of Reading.

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years. Reading: University of Reading Press.

University of Reading Special Collections. Christine Pullein-Thompson Collection, Correspondence with Publishers, Granada: MS 5078/107.

November 25, 2023February 9, 2024

Elspeth Huxley at Reading

‘It seemed to rain a great deal in Reading.’ (Elspeth Huxley, ‘Love among the Daughters’, p. 58)

Elspeth Huxley, born Elspeth Grant in 1907, was an agriculture student at Reading in the 1920s. Earlier posts on this blog have mentioned her ‘approved lodgings’ and her description of the Great Hall as ‘a sort of outsize garden shed’.

There are so many facets to Huxley’s life that it is hard to sum her up. She was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, travel-writer, journalist, broadcaster, agriculturist and environmentalist. She was esteemed as an expert on African affairs and was invited onto the Monckton Commission which reviewed the constitution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1960.

Huxley in Kenya — Elspeth Huxley plays a mancala game with two Kikuyu men at Njoro, Kenya in the 1930s (British Empire & Commonwealth Collection at Bristol Archives: BECC 1995/076/1/2/27)

In 1925 at the age of 18 she left her parents’ coffee plantation in Kenya and headed for England to begin two years as a student of Agriculture at Reading. She arrived during the period when the University College was being transformed into the University of Reading but, as far as I can tell, she made no mention of this in her writing or later interviews.

The University’s official record of her is sparse but there are two relevant entries in the University’s annual report for 1926-27: she was awarded the Diploma in Agriculture, Division I (‘Subject to completion of farm work’) and was the recipient of the Leonard Sutton Prize for Agriculture.

In an interview for the Bristol Museum in 1994, nearly 70 years later, the period at Reading was dismissed with no more than a cursory mention:

‘I left [Kenya] when I was 18 to get a bit of education as they thought, because I hadn’t had any to note.’

Nevertheless, it was a sufficiently important landmark in her life that she devoted six chapters to it in her autobiographical narrative ‘Love among the Daughters’.

‘Love among the Daughters’

This was Huxley’s 26th book. published in 1968 and serialised on BBC’s Woman’s Hour the following year. It was the third autobiographical volume recounting her early life and followed ‘The Flame Trees of Thika’ (1959) and ‘The Mottled Lizard’ (1962), accounts of her childhood in Africa. ‘The Flame Trees of Thika’ was made into a seven-part series by Thames TV in 1981.

The daughters of the title are Elspeth’s cousins, given the pseudonyms Gertrude, Kate and Joanna. They are the children of her ‘Aunt Madge’ and ‘Uncle Jack’ with whom she stayed on arrival in the UK and during the vacations.

The book is a chronological account of her time at Reading followed by a year at Cornell University in the USA. It is interspersed with witty descriptions of her eccentric relatives and their acquaintances. Huxley, newly arrived from the colonies, is the naive outsider, like an anthropologist observing the customs of a remote tribe, delicately negotiating English society with its house parties, fox hunting and intimidating servants. The same sense of puzzlement imbues her academic life – Reading was ‘honeycombed with subtle snobberies’ – while her first weeks at Cornell with its sororities and complex course structures were a bewildering sequence of events over which she appeared to have little control.

An interesting feature is her perspective on the relative merits of university life in England and the USA. Although she enjoyed her time at Cornell and appreciated closer relationships with professors and lecturers, she was less impressed by the academic culture – her courses were like an assembly line. They were were hard work – intensive and highly structured, and the examinations were memory tests:

‘Facts were black and white, not grey. The fuzziness was gone. The English ambiguity had annoyed me but now I missed it… The aim here was to answer questions; there [at Reading] to ask them.’ (p. 167).

The theme of university life in the States is one she had originally addressed in an article submitted to Tamesis, the College Magazine, in autumn 1927 – these were still her earliest impressions and focused on the size of the institution, the social life, fraternities, football games and the diversity of subjects on offer. Nevertheless, she had already made up her mind that:

‘Education slavishly follows set lines: whereas personal freedom is almost unlimited, intellectual bondage is complete.’ (Huxley, 1927, p. 12)

The Depiction of Reading in ‘Love among the Daughters’

The town of Reading with its ‘unpretentious’ College/University was always destined to be a disappointment.

‘No one would believe [Reading] had a university.’ (pp. 24-5)

Elspeth’s dream had been Oxford or Cambridge but a lack of Latin gave her little choice:

‘no one would be at Reading if he could possibly have got a place at Oxford’ (p. 60)

Some of her first impressions of the campus and its surroundings are recorded on page 47:

- ‘London Road was not as squalid as some of the neighbouring streets… little dwellings dark with grime’;
- Close by was ‘the Royal Berkshire Hospital, which looked more like a university than that establishment itself.’;
- The campus sported ‘an ugly clock tower’;
- ‘The whole place had a newly spawned and makeshift appearance and lacked dignity, coherence or style.’;
- The lobby was ‘much less imposing than the booking hall of any small country station.’.

Elsewhere she refers to ‘the dark back-streets of Reading wet with drizzle’ (p. 122) and contemplates the rumour that Reading was the second most immoral city in England (second only to Nottingham!).

On a lighter note, she writes of college dances, learning the tango, walks by the Thames, teas in Sonning and the Henley Regatta. She provides pen portraits of her lecturers and fellow students. Despite the alleged immorality of the town, relationships between female and male students were chaste, not for moral or religious reasons but simply because of a ‘lack of facilities’:

‘What could we do on a muddy tow-path in a wet gale on a Sunday Evening swathed in macs and blue with cold, even when strengthened by iced cakes?’ (p. 64)

Her academic studies centred on the biological sciences combined with practical farm work:

‘we spent many wet, cold and inconclusive afternoons trudging round the university farm learning how to mark out a field for ploughing, to distinguish Yorkshire fog from cocksfoot and sainfoin from broad red clover, to master the show points of bulls, cows, pigs and fat bullocks, and to calculate the areas of fields.’ (p. 117)

Studying the natural sciences was a new experience for her, and something of a revelation. She seems barely able to contain her enthusiasm for areas of biology, zoology and bacteriology such as the life of the liver fluke or the structure of a stamen.

The Book Reviews

The University of Reading’s Special Collections holds 35 pages of press cuttings containing reviews, publisher’s announcements and interviews with the author, all relating to ‘Love among the Daughters’.

The reviews tend to focus on the eccentricities of Huxley’s relatives and acquaintances and upper-class rural life spent hunting and shooting. Those that deal in any depth with Reading University echo the drabness and gloom of Huxley’s description, the petty bourgeois snobbery and student poverty.

Huxley’s time at Cornell receives far less attention, except from reviews in The New York Times and The Irish Times; a BBC Radio 4 broadcast on ‘Today from the South and West’ cut the whole section on Elspeth’s time in the US from the original script.

Several reviewers mention, or deplore, the role of students in helping to break the General Strike of 1926 believing that they were saving the nation. It was an event that Huxley herself looks back on with embarrassment at the political naivety of herself and her friends: ‘overnight the students became a reservoir of scabs’ (p. 138).

Huxley’s biographer, Christine Nicholls, claims that the critics were unanimous in their praise of the book, and while it is true that the response was overwhelmingly positive, there were a few reservations. Christopher Wordsworth in The Observer (29/9/68) suggested that the comedy was overdone. Others questioned the accuracy of Huxley’s memory and disputed the amount of rain that fell on the town.

A future post will address some of the aspects of ‘Love among the Daughters’ that may leave modern readers feeling distinctly uncomfortable, and consider the historical accuracy of a work that was written some four decades after the events depicted.

Thanks

To Thomas Birkhead at the Penguin Random House archive for permission to access the Review File for ‘Love among the daughters’ and to Jayne Pucknell, Senior Archivist at the Bristol Archives, for the transcript of Huxley’s 1994 interview and the photograph of her in Kenya.

Sources

Bristol Archives. Interview with Mrs Elspeth Huxley in Oaksey on 7th March 1994. Reference: BECC OH 0114.

Huxley, E. J. (1927). I’ll tell the world! Impressions of an American university. Tamesis: The Official Organ of the Students’ Union of the University of Reading, Vol. XXVI, Autumn Term, No. 1, pp. 11-13.

Huxley, E. J. (1968). Love among the daughters. London: Chatto & Windus.

Nicholls, C. S. (2002). Elspeth Huxley: a biography. London: Harper Collins.

University College Reading, Calendar, 1925-6.

University of Reading, Calendars, 1926-27 & 1927-28.

University of Reading. Proceedings of the University, 1926-27.

University of Reading Special Collections. Review file for ‘Love among the Daughters’ by Elspeth Huxley. Reference number: CW R/4/40.