Yesterday (Tuesday 5th March), I drafted the talk I'm going to be giving tomorrow to the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies on what I've been doing while a Barker Fellow at Durham. I was stuck as I preparing the talk at how complete my journey felt in some ways.
Over the weeks I had gained glimpses into what life what like for Headlam family members of successive generations, including into where Classics fitted into their lives. And then this all this came to a head on the last day I had been in the Special Collections Room, when I had seen not just school reports of Headlam boys (which showed how, typically, for young elite young men, classics was key to their education) - but poems, frequently containing classical allusions and sometimes on classical topics. These were written at home, both by boys and girls - the children of John Headlam, dating to around the middle of the 19th century.
Today, though, things felt even more like an end point. My main goal had been to look again at the poems and take better photos of them than I had managed in my haste on Thursday. I did that, and then I thought that I'd better see what of the remaining material - much of it not yet finally catalogued - might be relevant.
And - well - here is a quick overview. The TLDR is that I gauged how much remains to be seen, and I hope to return. I HAVE to return.
For one thing - I got to see the other side of the argument between John (for it was he - in an earlier post I stated that I was not sure) and Margaret Headlam (that's Margaret's brother John, not their father) that I'd become engrossed with earlier in my fellowship.
Now, as well as reading John's angry letters (among Margaret's papers), I got to see Margaret's to John. And it really is pretty well just that, SEE them - I've only so far glanced at them and taken some photos. But it looks as though Margaret stands her ground, is more measured in her responses than her brother and, unlike him, gives family news as well as continuing their discussion about the - what? doctrinal issues?
As well as seeing more about the relationship between John and Margaret, I saw papers of their brother Arthur - the sibling who was consistently doing well at school in the papers I'd looked at earlier. I saw from papers of Arthur from into his adulthood that he kept up his classical interests - via for example summaries of books of Thucydides. These merit further study.
There was also, among Arthur's papers, a news sheet, assembled out of stories, riddles etc by his family. Unlike the literary work done at home by Arthur himself as a young person which his father John appears to have set for Arthur and his siblings, among the fairytales and other stories, there was nothing I saw that was classical - why there is this omission is something I'd like to give thought to.
All this alone would have made the day a successful one. But I thought I should take a look into the papers of Lionel Headlam, one of Arthur's sons - to find out more about this generation of Headlams, and because it's a letter from Lionel, to his aunt Margaret - the one sent from France while he was employed as a private tutor for a young man - that has been among the most intriguing things in the collection that I've seen.
There are a lot of letters from his sister Rose Gladys (adding to the materials by her that I've seen already) including from when he was quite young. And there are a lot of school records and reports too - more, I think, that for any of the Headlam boys that I've seen.
These further show how key classics was to a young man's education - but there was more too.
I had been curious about Lionel since reading his letter to Margaret where he didn't seem in a good place in terms of his wellbeing - he seemed lost. The letter hadn't been dated but I can see from the materials I saw today, which includes correspondence from the town in France where he was staying, that it will likely have been when he was in his early 20s (I'll need to check all this).
The reports gave a sense of someone who, from when very young, was very able academically, not least in classics - the reports of his Classics masters are more detailed than those for other subjects, either because more tended to be said about boys' classical progress, or perhaps reflecting how proficient and engaged Lionel was with this subject.
But the reports also identified a tendency for Lionel to be somehow disconnected from his studies, and maybe from life in general - and this echoed the sense I'd gained from Lionel's own writing, in the letter to Margaret. I've talked about his in previous postings, and will say something about it in the talk tomorrow as well.
For example, a report sent home from Eton (I'll need to see whether I can find the date), describes him as a 'good steady boy; not very brilliant' before stating:
there is a kind indistinctness both in his writing & speaking which seems to imply some want of decisiveness or [I can't read the word, I'll keep trying].
According to another Master, meanwhile, Lionel 'does not look to me strong or in good health'. Further, the Master continues,
there is an air of lassitude in some of his work & attitudes.
The very last two things I saw after gaining these glimpses into Lionel as a person were two photographs of him - and this among family papers that do not contain many photos. I've found a photo of his brother Arthur and used it to illustrate one of the postings, but that was only because I searched his name and he was sufficiently prominent a public person (Bishop of Gloucester etc) for a photo to be easily findable and in the public domain.
I found seeing what Lionel looked like in these photos - as a boy, then a young man (he never became older than a young man - he died in his late 20s - I don't know why) affecting. I wish I could share them via this blog (but I can't do this without permission).
I've included two photos already in this posting though - not of anywhere in Durham, but of the stairwell of the Lit and Phil in Newcastle. Here's why.
On Monday evening, I went there to meet a former student, Nona Henderson (who is doing wonderful things with classics and primary teaching in the North East, and has just started blogging about her interests and practice). I arrived a few minutes early and taking in the impressive classical decor, I noticed a familiar name in the list of Presidents of the library beneath a copy of one of the panels of the Parthenon Frieze: Thomas Emerson Headlam, another of the sons of John Headlam, who I've been reading about over these weeks.
So I'll end here with this discovery in a place where I wasn't expecting to find anything Headlam-realted.
I've become very interested in the Headlams, especially I think Lionel, and I hope to return to Durham to make a study of his papers, especially the letters from Rose, which might be a source of clues for this intriguing person.
That's all for now!
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