What a day (I'm referring here to Tuesday 27th February). After doing what I do every Tuesday morning, namely go jogging, I spent a chunk of the morning commuting to Durham, doing some tidying up of earlier blog postings and tweaking the abstract for my paper for the Centre for Nineteen-Century Studies next week (on which more will follow). Then I hit the ground running when the archivist who had been retrieving the next set of Headlam papers for me to look at turned to the desk and got them for me.
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| Cosins Hall on Palace Green in Durham - where I'll be giving my paper next week (and which is also just a minute or so from 5 North Bailey, on which see below |
Now - there wasn't much classical content in all this. Plus there wasn't anything written by any of the Headlams as children. But what I read came at a good time for my project, after some days spent reading things by Headlam children, for it provided some glimpses into the grown-ups that the children I've been finding out about became. For instance, I read a poem, I assume authored by Rose:
In Memory of Scotie, The Faithfull [double l in original] Companion of Miss R. Headlam [...] a tiny dog, A Faithfull Friend, passed away Jan 22nd 1923.
This was the latest of several times when I've found myself moved at gaining a sudden window into the feelings of the people whose correspondence I have been reading.
Staying with Rose, I also saw a lot of papers connected with her very active role in the G.F.S.
As all the correspondents knew what the G.F.S. was, the full title was never spelt out and I resisted the temptation to look it up in the hope that the papers themselves would tell me. I could see that it was an organisation grounded in Christian values and principles, that it was run by women and that the 'G' likely stood for 'Girls' or possibly 'Guides'. Then, right at the back of one of the folders, I reached a letter written on letter headed paper which gave it: Girls' Friendly Society.
I saw that Rose was active in the Society - indeed, she seems to have pretty well run it, perhaps as a would-be tyrant from one set of papers I saw containing drafts of a speech she was preparing that seems to be making a case for a major change in the direction of the Society in response to changing social values.
There was, what's more, a letter from her brother Arthur Cayley Headlam, now the Bishop of Gloucester, advising her against her desired course of action which turns out to be an attempt to change both Central Rule of the Society.
I would like, at some point, to find out more about all this. These is sufficient material, I'd say, for a study of the G.F.S. at an time when attitudes about young women - and attitudes of young women - were on the move.
As for Arthur, he too emerged as someone of firm views who wasn't afraid to take issue with others, including in respect to children's education. In a piece in the Telegraph of Monday, September 13, 1937, for example, he responds to the arguments of a Mr Wells who had recently spoken in favour of a more progressive educational methods. For example, while Mr Wells favours teaching children the characteristics of various peoples rather than 'the names of countries, rivers' etc., Arthur considers that a child 'must know the names of places before he can learn about them'. After all, Arthur asks:
How can I appreciate the historic importance of the Nile valley if I do no know where it is?
And while, he states, Mr Wells favours 'eliminating the personal element from historical study', in his own view:
Children learn best through stories, and the stories of English history from the time of Alfred and the Cakes are much more likely to impress themselves on children's minds than the abstract ideas which no doubt they ought to attain eventually.
In a later document I read, this time in a tribute to Arthur after he had died, I found the attitudes conveyed in Arthur's letter to be echoed. This was in a report in the Gloucester Citizen of Wednesday, January 26, 1949 by his former pupil, the Dean of St Pauls, Dr W. R. Matthews.
'He had a reverence for facts, and very little reverence for theories', Dr Matthews is reported to have said, so much so that he 'sometimes [he] found his suspicion of brilliant theories exasperating'. Reviewing Arthur's scholarly writing - on the New Testament, Church History and 'the restatement of the Christian faith', meanwhile, he writes:
He knew exactly what he wanted to say and he said it forcibly.
From the sublime to the... Among the papers concerning Arthur, I also saw a letter about an Ironside sent from 5 North Bailey. I'm only sharing this because I must have walked passed this address many times over the past couple of weeks. On my way to Palace Green tomorrow, I'll pause there.
I'm not sure what an Ironside is...
More soon - when whatever I find, I anticipate that the posting will include a photo of 5 North Bailey.
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