| Description | Interview with Margaret Clarke on Tuesday, 16 July 1985 conducted by Colin McLaren.
Interview transcript:
McL How much of your life has been spent in and around Aberdeen University?
C All of it except five years.
McL And those five years were spent...?
C They were spent in Buckinghamshire, at Stowe where my husband was a house-master.
McL What are your earliest memories of life in the Principal's Manse?
C I do remember very far back - and I hope this is a genuine memory - and that is being lifted after a rest in the garden, presumably in a pram, by my father who always very much favoured the youngest of his children and had to be restrained by my mother as far as she could from lifting up a baby which possibly disrupted our lunch-time, or their lunch-time, shall we say.
McL How soon would this be after Sir George Adam Smith became Principal here?
C He became Principal in 1909 but residence was not taken up in the Chanonry until July 1910 he was in rooms in the meantime. This would have been perhaps 1912, 1913. I also remember something quite genuinely, I am sure I remember this - my second brother having finished at Sandhurst (there is a span of twenty years in my family), was off to India, the Indian Army, and he went in 1913 and I distinctly remember seeing him off. He never came back because he was killed in the War.
McL You were the youngest of the daughters?
C Of the whole family. A gap between me and my next sister, and then another gap, and well, as I say, five others closer together at the beginning.
McL How old was your father when you were born?
C He was born in 1856, so you can do the arithmetic.
McL Did he ever say what had brought him to Aberdeen, why he had taken up the Principalship here?
C I never heard him say so, because I just took the whole thing for granted, as you can imagine but he had been exceedingly happy at Queen's Cross. He was the first Minister at Queen's Cross and it was his first charge. He had had a very happy and successful time here and so he knew Aberdeen well and had lots of friends, and well, he came.
McL His own degree had been from Edinburgh?
C Yes.
McL What can you recall of the arrangement of the Principal's Manse? How was it used what parts of it were used and roughly how was it occupied?
C Well, I can start by saying that it was very fully occupied, because there were so many of us. Our friends came and a great deal of entertaining, University entertaining, was done. So, if you face the house from the Chanonry, the wing on the left, the ground floor was taken up by accommodation, a very nice sitting room, for maids and the whole of that floor had been an enormous wash-house and half of it was still a pretty big wash-house, the rest was this pleasant room, with various larders and this and that to the back. The centre bit was hall, stairs - I am talking of the windows as I say this - hall, stairs, two bathrooms and one bedroom. On the right there were still stables and a coach house, and they remained that way. The coach house quite late in the day became a garage and the stable was just for all sorts of things and there was a little room on the garden side of that which was known as the playroom. I don't remember that we played there very much because it was rather isolated, but much to the astonishment of the University, my parents (I think I could say my mother) demanded three bathrooms, apart from cloakrooms and things like that, and there hadn't even been one. On the garden side, facing south, were all the rooms that mattered more very much as they are now - bedrooms above, dining room, drawing room, study, and (my mother was a great correspondent) a little writing room to the right of the hall, the very pretty staircase, and a nursery wing was contrived which you don't see from the front, because it was very necessary. And there was an attic floor. My mother was really rather in despair because she was taken round it by a rather well known character called Professor Hector Munro Macdonald, a bachelor, and she was extremely depressed when she had seen over it because she didn't see it until my father had accepted the job,and he said: "What is the matter?" and she said: "Where am I to put my children?" He said: "How many have you?" to which she replied "Six." "Boys or girls?" "Three of each." She was too delicate to mention me and I don't suppose he had noticed. And he said, "Well, what's the problem? Up in the attic you can have three girls on one side and three boys on the other: there are three box-bed recesses in each room." In the end to the attic was turned over to the boys, but the box-bed recesses were used as things like dark-rooms and so on and so forth, and even washing facilities were put in upstairs, not a bath but other. What with the nursery and the cleverness of the architect, Dr. Kelly, it really was an absolutely ideal and lovely family house.
McL You mentioned a study, but with the seven children and their friends I imagine it must have been a very noisy house. Did your father work at home much, or did he prefer to work ... had he an office ...
C He did all his University work in the University.
McL At Marischal?
C Yes, at Marischal. Some people, I have been told, were very surprised to hear that the Principal was going in to Marischal every day and was accessible to people, which seems to imply that his predecessors had been rather remote. Yes, he definitely went every day. There were obviously times when he didn't, but I mean his routine was to go in straight after breakfast. He didn't very often come back for lunch. He used to have either - we thought this was very peculiar - he used to have a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee sent over from the Union: it seems a funny sort of lunch or else he became a member of the Royal Northern Club and he went up there - it was then in Union Street, he would walk up there. And, by the way, he used to walk to Marischal, always, until 1927 when we had a Morris Cowley car, which he never drove.
McL It was driven by... ?
C By one of the family or some lad from a garage who came…
McL You didn't have a chauffeur?
C Oh, never.
McL But you had servants. How many servants did you have?
C Three, regularly and four, on occasion.
McL Were they supplied,as it were, through the University?
C Absolutely not. And I would like to go back and tell you that my parents' demands were considered so exorbitant that they were obliged to pay for half and one big improvement they made was, where there is a verandah outside the dining room now, that stretched right across the drawing room and was a conservatory, so the drawing room was apparently gloomy to a degree. It didn't have a single window to the open air and Dr. Kelly designed that lovely big window which gives you all the sun and all the view of the garden. - I'm sorry, you asked me a question …
McL Well, you've answered it because I surmised from your reply that there was some story there that you wanted to tell about the University's attitude towards the alterations. What about the entertaining that your father did ex officio? Was that paid for by the University?
C No. I remember my mother ... I never heard money discussed, never, until I was grown up, more or less, and then at some point - but I think I was grown up then - my mother told me that he was to get an entertainment allowance, but the entertaining they had done before then, besides bringing up their large family, was nobody's business.
McL The entertaining itself - was it of members of the University community or was it visitors to the University?
C My parents made a point of entertaining, having to Sunday lunch or else a dinner, every single member of the staff and wives.
McL At what sort of level of the staff? Would that include Assistants?
C Yes, certainly particularly newly-arrived ones, and particularly if they had shy young wives - absolutely.
McL Had that been a break with tradition, do you think, from the previous Principal?
C I am not in a position to say.
McL As children, obviously you were aware of the entertainment, but were you, did you take an interest in the figures of the University at that time?
C Oh yes. We took them for granted. I never heard a word of gossip in all my growing up, and it was only when I started to be out and about and to meet other people that I discovered how they gossiped. My parents never, never gossiped they would have little jokes about people, anybody would. Oh yes, I remember some of the figures very well indeed. Professor Jack and,even before him, Professor Grierson - the Griersons were great friends of ours Professor Terry Professor Davidson, always wearing his tartan tie Professor Matthew Hay, and I would particularly want to mention him because he was a tremendous help and support to my father.
McL In what ways?
C Loyalty, I should say mainly, because he had rather carried the can during the vacancy and had worked very hard and was very much tipped for the Principal. Now, this I did hear but this is not gossip - this is fact. And he accepted my father's appointment with absolute loyalty, and couldn't have been more of a help I suppose in advising him about this and that because my father hadn't had this kind of administrative job before.
McL Was this in an informal sense a Vice-Principal's role?
C No, there was no Vice-Principal, all the time my father was Principal. There was no such post. I know that my father was deeply devoted to him because of this - he had a very sweet nature, he was Public Health or something of that sort, I don't know what the chair was called but that's what it came down to, and he just gave my father complete and utter loyalty and support and there was never a whisper of disappointment or bitterness or anything. Some people were deeply affronted at the appointment of the Principal of Aberdeen University going to a United Free Church Minister - that was low, that was really low!
McL Was there a faction, in fact?
C I don't think they 'ganged up', but whispers came back.
McL Are you prepared to mention any specific names?
C No, I'm not. But then it wasn't long before, I suppose, respect for my father's scholarship and his character and personality and so on, that very soon melted away. And, of course, he already had very loyal support from his Queen's Cross days, in the town as well as the University.
McL When the professors whom you have mentioned, Terry and others, came to the house, was it in any sense a formal occasion or were they in an informal mood, out of their gowns ...?
C Oh, absolutely out of their gowns, yes. Professor Davidson often came to lunch because he was a bachelor. Oh yes, completely informal great friends, in fact.
McL Did they bring their families?
C Yes, such of them as had. They seemed to be rather a childless lot, but not altogether.
McL So, in this house with the seven children and your father going up to Marischal, what role did your mother have?
C Oh, well,she had a good deal on her hands, looking after such a big household. When you say 'the seven children' you must remember that by the time my father was appointed my eldest brother was twenty, so - there was always somebody away at boarding school or at another university, something like that, so we weren't all that often together and it would be only the younger ones who made much noise. the
McL Would your mother also be responsible for the running of the house?
C Entirely. Oh, yes. Straight through to the kitchen and ... yes indeed. And she liked it.
McL Was she involved in any sense in the University life?
C Of course there were exceptions, but you found that there were certain professors' wives who really ... I mean, an Assistant's wife would have been the lowest form of life in the University, and there was no mixing up, or very little mixing up. There might have been in a certain department - but of different ranks and so on and quite a bit later, I mean she had her hands pretty full because, as I will tell you afterwards, there was nothing but entertaining all the time and she was a great support to my father she founded the University Ladies' Club, and that was open to all members, women members of staff and wives of all members of staff - academic staff it started as, than it broadened to others, senior technicians and people like that - and this Club of hers, the University Ladies Club, flourishes to this day and that made a great difference. She just thought this was so awful, it was nothing that she had ever been accustomed to, and something must be done about it and from that sprang the Country Dance Club, the Garden Group, the Book Circle, everything like that, and it was a great success. But there were certain ladies who didn't join, one or two they didn't care for the idea - much to her amusement more than anything else.
McL You mentioned Assistants' wives: the impression I have formed from talking to some people who came as Assistants is that very few of them were married, that this often came with promotion to Lecturer or whatever.
C That's right. I'm possibly wrong about Assistants' wives, but certainly Assistants and the most junior Lecturer's wife most certainly: to be invited to Chanonry Lodge as soon as possible after they had settled in, always, and kept up with. You say, was she involved in University life - very much so. She founded the Women's Union which is now absorbed, I mean we joined up, it it all one Union, but the women had nothing, but nothing and she started off in a modest way, she got the University to open a room in Marischal and she got ladies to volunteer to go and serve coffee at various times of day, and that went on for some time. Then - I don't know where she got the money from - they bought a house in Skene Terrace, which was terribly out of the way, but it was the Women's Union, a rather handsome house, I think it is used by Scouts or some youth organisation now, at the top of Skene Terrace, with quite a big garden. That was the Women's Union for many years, and it was, although not near either College, used quite a lot, and dances were held there, and there was a resident Warden. That no longer belongs to the University because it is not needed for women but she really was responsible for the Women's Union.
McL Can I ask: was her action there dictated by the perception of a need to be met or by a more positive view of the women's role in the University?
C I think possibly beginning with a need to be met, and then possibly developing a bit into the other.
McL From what you observed of her activities in this way and from your own observations, what was the position of women in the University in the late 'teens of the century and the 'twenties?
C Well, there were not a very great many of them but they seemed to be fairly content and to get on all right. You are talking of students?
McL Yes.
C There were very few women on the staff. I think I should also tell you that Mother continued working for the Union - and perhaps it was when they were buying this house, I remember Walter Elliott was Rector at the time because he came for the occasion, she organised an enormous event in the Music Hall, a sort of bazaar and it went on all day and raised a great deal of money. I think if you talk to anyone who was a student in her day they would speak of her with great devotion, they certainly do to me.
McL What was your father's attitude towards her involvement in this way? Was he in support?
C Oh, he was delighted. She did all sorts of other things too. Every Wednesday afternoon she went along to Dunbar Street where there was something called the Mother and Baby Club, for young mothers who perhaps hadn't much of a clue about bringing up their babies and she would get people to come and give them lectures about hygiene and this and that. She was also very strong on the National Council of Women, she was Chairman of the Aberdeen branch for years and years and had much to do with organising a big conference they held at some time so she was seldom idle.
McL Is it possible, looking at the University's session - either the calendar year or the University year - to give me some idea of how the year went, and the various repeated functions? Can you try and go through a year for me?
C As far as I was concerned, the first University function - although it wasn't an official one - was a dance that we always gave at Chanonry Lodge for members of the SRC and the Union and their partners, and that was always during the Christmas holidays, just after the New Year but that's a very personal sort of thing, it was great fun - the great big drawing room and rooms opening off each other, absolutely ideal for entertaining, and much fun sliding up and down on the French polish on the floor, to get it ready. And there used to be a Spring Graduation in March, I remember that. Then the next great thing as far as we were concerned was The Graduation, and would the strawberries in the Chanonry Lodge garden be ready and we always had some of the Honorary Graduates staying.
McL They stayed in the house?
C Quite often, yes. I'm going to go on to our visitors later. Of course, they couldn't all - but there was no University lunch laid on after the Graduation until towards the end of my father's time, and therefore even the ones who were not staying were at any rate either given lunch or dinner on Graduation Day and there was always the reception at night which my parents went off to to receive the guests. I can't think what else there was. My father, of course, having lost two sons in the War was very much behind the form that the Remembrance Day Service came to take and he would never have missed that for the world.
McL When Court met, or there was one of the regular events like this in the University, were there dinners for members of Court afterwards?
C No. He would much rather come home. He talked very little about his University work at home. He may have to my mother, but he didn't in general. The most he would say was, "Oh, the Senatus went well" or "There was a very long Court meeting" or, the Edilis Committee was seldom mentioned without a deep groan.
McL Why was that?
C A gentlemen that I have already mentioned, mainly. Professor Macdonald must have had many good points but he wasn't an easy man and he was pretty stubborn and I think he was a bit of a thorn in my fathers flesh. I've noticed that it is often pronouced Eddilis or Iddlis or something now, but I go by what my father said - he always called it the Edeelis - "Oh, the Edeelis today" that sort of thing. Those meetings seemed to be pretty long.
McL You spoke of visitors to Chanonry Lodge. How would you categorise them?
C We almost always had, for instance, the visiting preacher in Chapel. The Chapel meant a very great deal to my father to him it was the heart and soul of the University life, and we had a lot of rather distinguished visiting preachers and very delightful ones too. I think they always stayed with us - and their wives. Then very often there would be two or three Honourary Graduates, and Gifford Lecturers. I remember particularly Bishop Barnes of Birmingham, who became a very great friend: his lectures were so marvellous that they went from one room to the next room to the next room until they ended up in the Mitchell Hall, having started inthe Anatomy Theatre or something and everybody came away elated and delighted, and 'what a wonderful lecture', and the next day they just didn't know what it had been about. It wasn't his just fault, it was just so tremendously above their heads, but he put it across in a charming and clear manner, so you thought you understood. It was really a privilege to know Bishop Barnes.
McL Was the conversation, for example, with Bishop Barnes when he came home -did you expect it to be of an academic nature or did informality prevail?
C No, he just came with his delightful wife, several times, and he may have had that kind of conversation with Father in the study, but not with the likes of us. Other lecturers: there was something called the Myrtle Lectures which took place on Sunday afternoons, which is about the last time anybody wants to go to a lecture, but we used to have the Myrtle Lecturers too. It seems to me that we really - almost everybody who came officially to the University stayed with us. I don't know whether it you would interest you but I have been rather struck in trying to remember all the people I met through being a daughter at home. I'll start with some writers: John Buchan, and his family; John Masefield.
McL Can you perhaps indicate in what circumstances you encountered them and why it was they were here?
C My parents had known John Buchan's parents in fact, John Buchan's father had been the chief mover when my father was tried for heresy, but that was all forgotten. John Buchan was M.P. for the Scottish Universities. Those were the sort of people who came to stay. That was an old, old friendship. John Buchan and all his family were great friends. They used to fish in Orkney or Shetland and they would stay with us going and coming.
McL To stay with Buchan for a moment, was on the strength of this childhood meeting, or this early meeting at any rate, that your sister subsequently got to know him better and became his very distinguished biographer?
C That would have laid the foundation , but they being very hospitable people had lots of Oxford up to Elsfield and so she saw a lot of. him then. I don't know that she saw such a great deal of him later but certainly when he died they asked her to do it, they wanted her to do it. We had always been in touch because they were friends.
McL Again, just staying briefly for a moment longer: his role as Member as well as a family friend, did that suggest that your father was himself interested in politics or possibly in the Imperial interests which Buchan had?
C Well, my father was a Liberal, which Buchan wasn't. I don't know about Imperial interests, but my father was tremendously interested in India. He and all his nine brothers and sisters had been born in India, and a lot of them had made their careers there and he had been there, but I never heard him talk much about the Empire, I must say.
McL Who else was there amongst your …
C John Masefield was a great friend, and he used to send all his books inscribed - I've got them all downstairs, every one of them - to my mother, in particular. That was nothing to do with the University, he was just a friend. E.M. Forster.
McL He came purely as a friend?
C First of all, coming for an Honorary Degree, but making friends. I remember him lunching with us, and I was about eighteen: I was to sit next to him, and I had never heard of him or of any of his books, and I thought I had better read one. I chose Where Angels Fear to Tread, and unfortunately I really could make nothing of it. It was another seven or eight years before I became a Forster addict through A Passage to India. Therefore I don't feel that either he or I got very much out of this! He was pretty silent, actually, but he might have been very chatty with another neighbour. I don't suppose he knew how to deal with young ladies. Next on the list, rather surprisingly, comes Queen Mary. She came for an Honorary Degree but before that she had invited herself - a private visit - because I think she must have heard my father preach. She had a great notion of my father, and she came with Princess Mary to lunch and then they were - I think the Lord Provost was invited to lunch to meet her. It wasn't an official visit at all, it was purely private she had lots of people with her, of course. I know she was shown the Cathedral and she was brought to see the Brig of Balgownie and then back to Chanonry Lodge for tea. My mother was in America at the time because my eldest sister had married and had just had a baby and Mother had gone out there. So my second sister Kathleen, who was about twenty, was a very capable hostess. At a later date Queen Mary came again to lunch when she got her LL.D. There was a nice story about the then Sacrist at Marischal who was a great character called Harvey, very portly. Queen Mary arrived from Balmoral about a quarter of an hour before she was expected which was a little awkward, but Harvey was on the steps and she got out of the car and said, "I am afraid I am a little early," to which he replied, "Deed ye are, ma'am." Meanwhile, my parents were scuttling down the stairs. Anyhow, that's Queen Mary safely into the list. Then we had - explorers like Sven, and Bertram Thomas. As far as I know, they just came to stay with us - they might have been giving lectures at the Geographical Society, because that was another category that very often came to us.
McL Was the Geographical Society a particular interest of your father's?
C Yes, very much so.
McL Why was this?
C He had written a Historical Geography of the Holy Land, and he was very interested in geography.
McL So he was interested in contemporary geography, as it were, as opposed to the purely historical and antiquarian side?
C Yes, he was. Talking of historical geography, we had regular visits from General (or Field Marshal) Allenby, who used to stay at Balmoral every year and would always come to pay his respects to Father, coming or going, because the Historical Geography had been more or less his Bible during his Campaign, so he had a great regard for my father. The funny thing is that one took all these people completely for granted I mean, I didn't think, 'oh how marvellous to be meeting all these people' - not in the slightest, they were just the sort of people who came. I would perhaps make an exception for The Queen, but otherwise ... Then, Sir Arthur Keith and I remember anthropologist, L.S.B. Leakey, the African one. Did I mention Sir Wilfred Grenfell? He stayed he was not lecturing, he just came with his wife to stay - don't ask me why, but he did, my parents must have known him somehow. Then we come to the arts: Sir D.Y. Cameron was a great friend James McBey Sir Arthur Somerville, the musician. And, rather surprisingly, at least to people with a stereotyped idea of a Presbyterian household, we knew quite a lot of stage people: Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson. I'm not saying all these people stayed, but most of them did, the Cassons did.
McL Would this have been perhaps when they were performing in ...
C Yes, when they were here. Sir Henry Lytton. Oh, some Archbishops, such as Archbishop Davidson and Archbishop Lang. Archbishop Lang only came, I think, for the celebrations in 1930/1931, and he stayed. But Archbishop Davidson simply came as a friend, more than once, with his wife. Wives, if there were any, came with their husbands. Sir John Reith, as he was then, was a life-long friend. He did get a degree but the friendship was nothing to do with the degree. He remained a life-long friend of mine until his death. That's a sample. What a privilege for me. But I never thought of it as such, we were just old pals!
McL You did mention, in connection with the theatrical visitors that that was a minister's house. You have mentioned the fact that you were unfamiliar with Forster's works. Does this suggest that there were fairly defined limits on interests and activities in the house, on what might be available to be read in the house?
C I wouldn't say so. I just didn't happen to have read any Forster, that was it. Probably other members of the household might have but after all, Forster was a pretty young man, a comparatively young man, at that time. My father's two great passions were Dickens and Trollope, and always in, the holidays when there were a good many of us at home he read Dickens to us in the evenings, in the study. He read beautifully, beautifully. The funny thing was, he read the Dickens and my mother read the Scott. She had been brought up in London but she read Scott and he read Dickens.
McL Since you have spoken of him and revealed this personal side of him, can I ask you if you could assess him, as it were, in three ways: first, as a father and you have already partly done this, I think secondly, as a scholar, if you feel able to, within his field and thirdly, as a Principal. Perhaps you can start with him as a father.
C I would say that he more or less left the day-to-day up-bringing of us to my mother, but I think that happens in a great many families. He was never remote. I mean, he might be working in the study, but if you wanted to go in for any reason, he didn't chase you out or say 'Go away'. It's difficult to assess your father whom you love. He was very warm, very funny, and rather a tease.
McL Would these have been sides of him that would have been apparent beyond the family, to his colleagues and to other people in the University? Did he have a Principal's manner for University occasions?
C Well, he was very dignified. He did all that well, but he was anything but pompous, not in the slightest. But I always remember - graduations were sometimes rather rowdy occasions, quite different from what they are now - if the students broke into song or started shouting or something, my father would just sit forward in his chair (he always seemed to be taking the graduation, I can't remember Chancellors doing it, but they must have), and look ... and that was all: they stopped. I think they had a great respect for him, a great affection too.
McL Can we then move on to your assessment of him as Principal? You have mentioned that side of it. What about the administrative side of the Principalship? Was that something he assumed with interest or as a necessary labour?
C I think he became interested, and people have mentioned how, although it was in no way what he had been trained to do, he applied himself very diligently to it and became a good - I was going to say businessman, that's not quite right, but he was a good administrator, I think. It's not for me to judge, but other people have judged that.
McL And, with the exception of the Professor you mentioned earlier, was he someone who received the support of the Court? Was he working, as it were, with the Court or were there occasions when he found he was perhaps in a minority, that the view of the University or the Court was against him?
C If he did, he never really talked to us about that. I would say that he was far more often with the Court. I don't remember hearing of any frightful splits or factions or anything like that. He was always on good terms with Professor Macdonald in the sense that there was no real animosity, just that I suppose they were chalk and cheese.
McL And his scholarship, was it to any degree put aside because of the burdens of university work?
C Indeed, yes.
McL Was this a source of regret to him?
C Yes, I think so. The only major book he published after he became Principal - you know he wrote about all the Prophets - he wrote Jeremiah. A Divine said to me the other day that he thought it was his greatest book, and I said, "It's odd you should say that because he wasn't pleased with it." Even after he was Principal he did a lot of lecturing in America and so on. He had to. But he enjoyed it, he liked America very much.
McL When you say 'he had to', you mean ...?
C Financially. I don't mean we were told we were on the bread-line and poor Father had to go to America, because he always loved going to America, but I think it was a great help.
McL Did he have lecturing duties in the University?
C No. He preached quite often.
McL But he didn't teach, even at a postgraduate level?
C A few years before he retired somebody suggested that it would be a very good idea - I think it was for members of the staff - if he could give a few tutorials or something on public speaking. I don't think he did it for very long, but certainly he was asked to do that and he did it for a bit I rather think just in his room at Marischal, just two or three people at once.
Interview continues on MS 3620/1/27/2
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