In October 1914, thirty six new students arrived to begin their university careers at Somerville. Amongst these ‘freshers’ were Vera Brittain, the future author and playwright Muriel St Clare Byrne and another English exhibitioner, Una Ellis-Fermor, who would become a distinguished academic.  In her diary, Vera Brittain recorded the excitements of student life, her impressions of the University of Oxford as well as Somerville College and detailed the conventions and regulations to which female undergraduates were expected to conform.

“I live in an atmosphere of exhilaration, half delightful, half disturbing, wholly exciting.” Chronicle of Youth, Wednesday 14^th October 1914

She also recorded her impressions of notable Somerville students such as Dorothy L. Sayers, of the Principal Emily Penrose and of those dons who were to teach her. Members of the SCR in October 1914 included Helen Darbishire, the English fellow and future College Principal, who was to be one of the first women to lecture at Oxford. The Classics fellow, Hilda Lorimer, was of particular interest to Vera; after their first meeting, she recorded a ‘small, wiry, rather astringent person’ who attributed Vera’s lack of Greek to laziness. Miss Lorimer was a leading Homeric scholar, widely travelled in Greece and the Balkans, interested in ‘everything’; Vera described her as “set apart by her own versatility” and soon came to appreciate her kindness and strength of character. Miss Lorimer spent the next four years combining her academic duties with war work, such as translating for the Admiralty, assisting Belgian refugees and, in 1917 and 1918, serving with the Scottish Women’s Hospital Corps in Salonika.

Miss Darbishire is on the left, Miss Lorimer 2nd from right

 

For Somerville, the new academic year proceeded largely as normal, in great contrast to the men’s colleges, whose numbers were depleted with most of their undergraduates, as well as many fellows and staff, enlisting. Only a few Somerville students did not return in October 1914; one was trapped in Canada as all the steamers were required for transporting troops, another lost her funding which came from Germany and had been seized by the German government when hostilities commenced. Some sought a more active role in the war effort; a second year historian, Grace Procter, deferred her return for a year in order to work for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Wives Association and Charis Barnett took leave of absence to work as an interpreter for the Women’s Emergency Corps. She did not return to Somerville but went on to become a nurse at a Friends’ Mission in France and worked in the Refugee Maternity Hospital at Châlons-sur-Marne in 1915-1916. She married in 1918 and after the war enjoyed a career in health and welfare, publishing numerous articles and books on birth control and child care.

Charis Barnett was the first Somerville student to abandon her academic life for war work; several others were to follow her lead, most famously Vera Brittain, who was one of the few to return and complete her studies.

 

 

“It is impossible even in writing a college letter to pass over in silence the subject which is filling everyone’s mind. In Oxford we are reminded at every turn of the greater happenings…”

Oxford Letter, Somerville Students Association Annual Report 1914

 

Initially, the outbreak of war had comparatively little impact on Somerville College; the long vacation was drawing to a close and by September preparations were underway for the beginning of the new academic year.

Madeleine Shaw Lefevre (pictured right), the College’s first principal, died on 19^th September and plans were made for a memorial. Miss Ethel Jones, the Mary Somerville Research Fellow, had to abandon her research trip to Munich and Vienna but was able to continue her work at the British Museum instead.

However, changes were taking place in Oxford as the University city came increasingly to resemble a garrison town. Soldiers were quartered in empty colleges, an army hospital (the 3^rd Southern General) had taken over the Examination Schools and New College garden was used as a recreation ground for the wounded. The town hall had become a centre for the ‘knitting and shirt-making industry’.

“It will be a strange term for freshers and a difficult term for everyone; but once started, the routine of work, untempered by many of the usual distractions, will probably prove a welcome aid towards maintaining a sane mind which must be the chief contribution that non-combatants can make to the country.”

Many Somervillians chose to contribute more directly to the national cause. Miss Pamela Bruce, the sister of the Vice-Principal, Alice Bruce, established the Belgian Refugee Committee in Oxford; both the Misses Bruce, together with returning undergraduates, worked to resettle and assist the newly arrived refugees once term began. Dr. Dorothea Maude gave up her Oxford practice to join a British Field Hospital under the Belgian Red Cross on September 7^th. She spent part of her time in the base hospital in Antwerp and part of her time at the front, often under fire.

The College’s first contribution to the war effort was to provide bedsteads and mattresses to the 3^rd Southern General Hospital, when the Administrator, Lt. Col. George Ranking, received an order to increase the hospital’s capacity to 1,000 beds. Within months, Lt. Col. Ranking was to approach Somerville with a request for further assistance which would provide a war-time role for the College’s buildings if not its members.

 

 

 

In 1919, a student called Margaret Bunbury Foote came up to Somerville to read English. Her father was a clergyman and her mother a suffragette and member of the Women’s Social & Political Union. Amongst the papers Margaret Foote was later to leave to Somerville College was the travel diary she had kept during her summer holiday in 1914 when, as a 15-year old, she accompanied her mother on a trip to Germany to visit friends.

The daily entries changed from a catalogue of sights seen and snippets of local detail to a fascinating record of their experiences as enemy aliens upon the outbreak of war.

 Margaret recorded the reactions of their hosts and fellow tourists, caught out by the sudden escalation of hostilities; she and her mother met with surprise, confusion, suspicion and kindness, patriotism and resignation, and, as in Britain, the belief that the war would soon be over.  Margaret’s writing also reflected the excitement of the situation and the humorous aspects of their predicament; it was not until the 30^th August, when they had finally reached France, that the sight of a long, silent train of wounded soldiers ‘brought the war home to us more than anything else I think.’

They returned to England via Switzerland and France. As Margaret and her mother slowly progressed towards the coast, they encountered refugees and troop trains, heard conflicting accounts from the front line and eventually boarded a steamer for Folkestone, filled with other British travellers and hundreds of French and Belgians fleeing from the advancing German army. The diary concludes, “Best of all was to know that we were safely back in our own dear country again! All the same, I would not have missed those five weeks for anything!”

 

Sunday August 2^nd

All day, Sunday though it is, the shops have been open by order, so that the men can buy things before going to the front….I want to photograph these beautiful, crooked, old streets, with their picturesque little houses; but they will not let me because of the war… A policeman told me today that two ladies were put in prison on Friday for photographing the bridge!

 Wednesday August 5^th

“War is declared with England.” This is the first thing we heard on coming down to breakfast.

…Then we began to talk about the war, as everyone does, and Mother asked him his opinion of it all. “Well, personally,” he replied, “I believe that if women had had the vote, this war would not have broken out.” It is astonishing how many people are in favour of Votes for Women here in Germany. They seem to think it so natural that women should have the same rights as men.

 Sunday August 30^th

A train full of wounded soldiers from St. Dié was expected almost immediately and Red Cross nurses were preparing to receive them. Beds had been made up in all the station waiting rooms for those who were too bad to be moved to the hospital. In a few minutes the long, silent train came in and porters and nurses carried many of the men to the ambulances. Others, who were more slightly wounded, walked alone….. A few minutes before we had all been talking and laughing; but now we stood silently watching these men, with their muddy, blood-stained uniforms and bandaged heads and arms, as they walked past us.

 Monday August 31^st

We invited a French officer who was sitting near us ‘to tea’ at 4 o’clock…He told us a sort of poisoned gas had been invented, only a few days before France declared war, which could kill whole regiments.

Tuesday September 1^st

The boat was crowded – eight hundred people being on board. There were the three hundred of us, English people, who had come through from Switzerland and the others were all Belgians and French refugees.

‘Exactly a fortnight before the world as I had known it crashed into chaos, I went to Leek to take my Oxford Senior.’  Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth.

The long vacation in 1914 should have been a time of rest, recuperation and preparation for students and Fellows. Many of the Senior Common Room (SCR) used the vacations to travel and work on their own research. Undergraduates, forbidden to stay up, had no choice but to leave Oxford. However, for students hoping to come up in the autumn, July could be when they faced the final hurdle, as it was the last opportunity to take the examinations required for entry.

To obtain a place at College, candidates had to pass the entrance examination and demonstrate that they had reached the required standards in Latin, Ancient Greek and Mathematics. Many students had obtained qualifying examinations such as school leaving certificates, but for those wishing to take degree courses, it was necessary to pass Responsions, an examination set by the University of Oxford.

Almost one third of those who would come up in October 1914 sat Responsions that July whilst Vera Brittain sat the Oxford Senior Local “in the airless atmosphere of Leek Technical School” on July 20th. In passing this exam, she was able to confirm her place at Somerville but she had not escaped Responsions Greek and had to sit that examination at the end of her first term.

For the SCR, it was a summer fraught with interruption and uncertainty. Fellows who had intended to travel in August were forced to cancel their trips whilst those who left Oxford in July little imagined the difficulties they would face on the journey home.

Miss Phillpotts, who had become the first Lady Carlisle Research Fellow in 1913, became trapped in Iceland with the Bursar, Miss Walton, but luckily they ‘succeeded in catching a boat which dropped them at the Faroes, whence they embarked for Leith’. Miss Penrose, holidaying in Switzerland, had an ‘adventurous journey home, which included wheeling her luggage on a trolley for a couple of miles and making quite a triumphal progress through France in company with some other English in military trains’ (Somerville Students’ Association Annual Report 1914). She was able to return to Somerville in September but for other College members, the outbreak of war was to interrupt their studies and, in some cases, end their academic careers.

‘The hall proved ideal for dancing: the floor was all that could be desired.’          Somerville College Log Book, June 1914

Commemoration Week, the week after the end of Trinity Term, is a traditional time for balls in Oxford, and in 1914 Somerville held a Commemoration Dance in its new hall. The JCR sought permission for an end of term dance from the Council in October 1913, soon after the hall’s official opening. With too little time until the end of Michaelmas and the end of Hilary Term coinciding with Lent, it was decided to hold the dance in Commemoration Week and, to avoid clashes with that year’s Gaudy and the New College ball, on a Monday, 22^nd June.

A committee was formed and spent the next eight months preparing for the dance. Two hundred tickets were issued at 8 shillings apiece, and Herr Moritz Wurm and his Blue Viennese Orchestra were engaged, at a cost of £32 10s. Other College members were preparing for the dance as well, including Dorothy L. Sayers, who asked her friend and fellow luminary of the Mutual Admiration Society, Charis Barnett, to help her arrange dancing lessons.

The dance itself went splendidly by all accounts, with the hall holding a substantial number of onlookers along with 90 dancing couples. Starting at 9 p.m., refreshments and ices were served on the balcony, the band played ‘inspiriting music’, and the guests danced with ‘increasing vigour’ until the festivities ended at 4 a.m.

In the College log book, the dance was described as a tremendous success; the floor of the hall received particular notice, apparently being much praised by the participants! The event was a reflection of the College’s confidence and optimism. Somerville was growing in size and in stature, celebrating its new buildings and position within the University, inching ever closer towards hard-won degrees for women.  Few could have anticipated that, within a year, the hall would be part of a hospital.  At dawn on 23^rd June, the surviving revellers were photographed on the Library steps in their dress finery, as the evening and an era ended.

Georgie Salzedo

On 9^th May 1914, the Polish anthropologist and Somerville student Marya Czaplicka applied for funds for an expedition to Siberia.

Marya Czaplicka had arrived in England in 1911 to take the diploma course in anthropology at Somerville. Intelligent and charming, she was a mature student and accomplished scholar. Speaking Russian in addition to Polish and English, she was uniquely placed to study the social anthropology of Northern Asia, her subject being shamanism in the tribes of Siberia. However, a perpetual shortage of funds posed a recurring threat to her academic career; on this occasion, the financial backing for an expedition, due to depart before the month’s end, had failed to materialize.

The Trustees of the Mary Ewart Fund met in Somerville on 18^th May and a grant of two hundred pounds was awarded. Half of it was advanced personally by the trustee Mrs T.H. Green and credited to Miss Czaplicka at the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade in London. This enabled the expedition to depart as planned just three days later. Miss Czaplicka explained the urgency of the situation in her application which is held in the College archives. An early departure was vital as the party had to get to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk and thence along the Yenisei River to its mouth in time for the final breaking up of the ice. Their communications would depend on the river and it was only open for five months of the year at most.

Once underway, Marya Czaplicka wrote to Somerville’s Principal, Emily Penrose, “My best address for the present will be c/o [the]Norwegian Consulate who will send any letters to me which may arrive before the middle of August but from that date I shall be isolated from the world.” Unaware that war had been declared, Miss Czaplicka was to find herself once again in financial straits when transferred funds went astray in the confusion. As the minutes of the next Trustee meeting noted succinctly, ‘the outbreak of war had complicated matters.’

“I realised that I could not have any chance at all” Vera Brittain, ‘March 16^th-20^th, Somerville College, Oxford’ Chronicle of Youth

In March 1914, Vera Brittain visited Somerville to take the College entrance examination. She had applied not just for a place but for a scholarship, despite advice from the Principal, Emily Penrose, not to try for the latter. Her anxiety before the exam was poignantly similar to that felt by many students going through College entrance today. When she saw the first of the week’s papers, she was horrified to find that she had not prepared correctly at all, and only continued the exam after promising herself that she would ask Miss Penrose to send her home in the afternoon.

Of course, she need not have worried, as the very next week she received a letter announcing the decision to give her an exhibition of £20 for 3 years. She regarded the news as amazing, commenting “what they can have awarded the Exhibition on I cannot think, as I finished none of the papers”! Perhaps her interview with Helen Darbishire (who would become Principal in 1931), with whom she discussed Wordsworth, convinced the College of her academic merit.

The entrance examination itself was sat by all Somerville applicants (according to Brittain, there were 82 in 1914). The papers included one translation from Latin, Greek, French, or German, and also one paper in the applicant’s chosen subject. For Vera Brittain, that was English Literature. Listed in the College annual report with the other scholars and exhibitioners, this is the first published record of Vera Brittain’s long association with Somerville.

Georgina Salzedo

“I didn’t begin to write my speech for the O.S.D.S.* debate until Thursday morning, and I timed it to take exactly two minutes. I was the Proposer and the motion was, ‘That the reluctance of the modern woman to marry is a benefit to Society.’ I wore my white satin with the pink on it and, to my surprise, wasn’t the least bit nervous….”  Letter home from Charis Barnett, Somerville Student,  1 February 1914

In February 1914 Somerville College was a vibrant and thriving academic community as this extract from Charis Barnett’s letter shows.  Charis (pictured above) was a member of several societies and clubs both within the College and in the wider University.  Indeed she was a founder member of The Somerville Mutual Admiration Society (so called because everyone would have named it that,  if they hadn’t already!), an invitation-only writers circle to which the young Dorothy L Sayers also belonged.

Somerville was a relative newcomer amongst Oxford’s colleges, founded thirty five years earlier as Somerville Hall and located just outside the historic centre of the city, next to the Radcliffe Infirmary. In 1908 it had become the first of the Oxford women’s colleges to introduce an entrance examination. In 1912 it had been able to establish its first research fellowship thanks to an endowment from Rosalind Countess of Carlisle.

The Principal, Emily Penrose, was raising academic standards, encouraging students to take full degree courses even though the University had not yet admitted women to degrees. In 1879 the first intake of students numbered twelve; by February 1914 there were over one hundred in residence and they were able to enjoy Oxford undergraduate life, formerly the preserve of men, more widely than ever before.

*Oxford Students Debating Society