| Description | Interview with Isabella Robertson on 5 September 1986 recorded by Jennifer Carter
Transcript of Interview :
C I am confirming that I'm speaking now with Miss Isabella Robertson, who graduated MA in 1929. Now do flow on as you were doing a moment ago.
R Well we were very poor, and any bursary we had was earned by the sweat of our brow, I mean I had sat the bursary competition and I had a county bursary, I think I came 13th in the bursary competition.
C Which meant about what, £25 maybe?
R Oh maybe up to £40 a year and I mean we were poor, we were really poor. My father had had this very serious accident, he wasn't very fit, my mother did everything and I just worked. I may say, you talk about social life at the University but it was based on extra curricular activities, apart from the Modern Language Society, I did nothing. I never attended a debate, I never attended a dance or anything like that. There was a little local life in Kintore you see, you know one attended the Liberal Society at that time and one had an occasional dance there and you took a small part in village life but I had no social life.
C It was books, books, books.
R It was reading, like Enoch Powell said the other day.
C Slogging away.
R Slogging away reading, working.
C You lived at Kintore while you attended University?
R I lived in Kintore and I travelled by train until there was a strike of course in 1926 and then finally it was over and we went back and then I was in lodgings for the 3 months in my final year. But of course not accustomed to living in town, there were trams and that disturbed me, I went back home at weekends to be able to work.
C So to begin at the beginning, you were schooled where at ?
R Kintore first.
C Then Inverurie Academy?
R Then Inverurie and I have nothing but praise. The other day I saw in the hands of a friend from Aberdeen, who was once headmaster at Braemar, a picture of my headmaster Dr. Wilson and this man had taught at Inverurie Academy and had asked for this picture of the headmaster Dr. Wilson and showed it proudly to me, I said oh its marvellous, the discipline was tremendous. And of course we were very thoroughly taught in Inverurie but equally thoroughly taught in Aberdeen.
C But given your background of a poor farming family, was it a kind of big decision to come to university, I mean what were the alternatives in a sense?
R Well there wasn't in my case. The headmaster thought I was suitable material for the university.
C And your parents just accepted that?
R My parents just accepted that and I went to Aberdeen and worked hard … and been happy ever after.
C Splendid what a nice life history.
R It was. I mean the study of languages, it leads to so many things. I mean I travelled all over the world, and lots of international friendship.
C What did you actually study at university?
R French and German.
C And you had done both languages at school already had you?
R Oh yes.
C And what else did you have to take alongside them at university?
R Oh logic and …
C Moral philosophy?
R I think I did the medical class and zoology and botany and …
C But it was really the languages which held your interest?
R Marvellous, wonderful.
C And what kind of a degree did one come out with then, was it called a joint honours degree in French and German?
R It was called a joint honours degree in French and German.
C Who were your principal teachers of those languages at university?
R In French there was a Professor Shears, a very languid Englishman, who did mostly old French. Then there was Monsieur Cassati who was a very animated Frenchman. He became a great friend of mine, I spent some days in Paris, when he was headmaster at one of the schools in Paris. Then there were various others. And in German, Bruford, Professor Bruford.
C I know that name well.
R He was very scholarly, but very sharp and I can't remember much about the Germans.
C Willie Witte or was it?
R Witte, I think, no Witte wasn't there.
C He hadn't yet arrived as an assistant?
R No.
C How well did you know the staff when you were an undergraduate, was there a lot of contact or was it rather distant?
R Well we were just talking about academic hospitality. The honours group were entertained by the Professors.
C Once or regularly?
R Oh once a year at a party.
C Once a year.
R Yes, the small honours group. But no, not the first two years, only the junior honours, no not even junior honours, we were all abroad by that time. But in senior honours we were entertained at a party and then I knew again my local village life came out . One of the professors of divinity, Gilroy, came and spent his holidays in Kintore and Mrs Gilroy, she was very old wearing a hat, she entertained me to lunch and I thought that was just marvellous, being taken to lunch by the professor's wife at the Chanonry. And then the occasional assistant in the German department would ask you or one or two of us to tea, but it was very little. You know there wasn't much social life there.
C Was there much direct individual teaching as it were for example apart from the lectures, did you have …?
R Oh there was a tutorial, occasional tutorial but very little, we were large classes and …
C About how many, two dozen, three dozen, 50?
R Oh you mean, at the beginning probably. The French classes were always large, there were about 100 there and then, the honours group. I have the picture of my honours group here and I was hoping to see some of them but there are none of them around.
C Oh what a shame, and that would have been about how many of you?
R Oh about 10 of us, some of us are dead of course.
C Did you know each other very well then as an honours class, you spent a lot of time in each others company, did you?
R Yes, as far as we went to libraries. You see that's what I think is so dreadful today. All these, even the professors whose hearts seem to bleed for the poor students who are not getting big enough grants or handouts whatever they are, I'm sorry to show my political …
C No, it is extremely interesting.
R A professor, I think it was at Durham the other day, said the poor students weren't getting nearly enough to live on, couldn't afford to buy books and they'd to spend their lives in the libraries.
C What a terrible fate.
R What a terrible thing, my heart bled for them, really, and it at least kept them off the streets, I think, from demonstrating, but I really think, I mean I think students, and of course teachers too today, I think they are jolly well off, and I think the pay is good for teachers. I was a teacher myself and enjoyed it very much.
C Would you have had any other choice of career effectively?
R No.
C So it was teaching or nothing?
R It was teaching or nothing. Well I mean there were no other opportunities for one at that time.
C Coming back to the finances of ones student life then, you lived with your parents and they supported you effectively?
R I couldn't afford to do anything else.
C And your bursary paid what, your train fare in and out, and …?
R Oh I suppose so.
C Yes, and the books you had to buy?
R And of course one went abroad. One took au pair jobs abroad.
C That was reasonably easy to arrange was it?
R Yes, it was quite unpaid.
C Quite unpaid?
R You didn't get, but you learned French. You see whenever you become a paid servant a different relationship establishes itself and I was fortunate to find myself in France in rather nice families, well one the first one wasn't so good, but the second one in the Champagne country it was marvellous and one met people one would never otherwise have met. They had their "jour," their "at home day," and all these and all these people, they turned up, and you met all these people.
C So it was a tremendous social education?
R Marvellous and I still meet a lot of people through Franco Scottish societies and the other day we had the director of Veuve Cliquot champagne and I spent the evening with him and he said to me "Where did you learn your French?" or something like that and I said "Oh in a small place in Champagne called Villais au Bois" and he said "But that's next door to us, come and see us the next time you are over." It was a marvellous experience.
C How would you have got a job like your first French job?
R We put an advertisement in a French newspaper.
C That seems a very daring and independent thing to do?
R Yes. Well you see the first job I had it was an exchange with a person of my age at a kind of home farm, an old chateau in the country in Normandy near Falaize and it was my first acquaintance with divided families, with father and mother that didn't get on together. The father was having a liaison with the housekeeper or something like that and the language I learned there was a language that I wouldn't otherwise have ever heard because the father and mother, husband and wife, didn't get on well together, they were shouting at each other.
C An interesting extension of your vocabulary.
R Their daughter and I, we were supposed to speak English one day and French the next but after that very nice. One keeps up ones friendships.
C You went to France and also to Germany?
R No. I didn't go to Germany until after, before I started teaching. Just to a class.
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R … very good European.
C When you were an undergraduate how much emphasis was given in those days to the speaking of the language? Did you get a lot of conversation classes and so on?
R Not a great deal.
C It was mainly literature was it?
R Yes language and literature.
C So the conversation and so forth you learned entirely by staying in the country.
R I remember the first time I went to Germany travelling by ship from Aberdeen to Hamburg …
C And nobody could understand what you were saying?
R No it wasn't that but I wasn't a good sailor and I was lying in my bunk and I heard all these young German students talking and I thought goodness I'll never get this fluency but after a week or two it came.
C As someone who studied languages how conscious were you as a student and your fellow students of things going on in the European world then in the 20s?
R I always remember - we did translations and essays all the time - and I always remember being given a subject of some international topic and M. Cassati said something about that we must begin to keep our minds, I mean open our minds a bit to what was happening in the outside world, and from that time I used to go and read all the newspapers in the public library.
C So you were aware of the trends in Europe and you would have been looking at things happening in Germany?
R One was very aware when I went to study in Germany in 34, you could see what was happening.
C How common was that knowledge of world affairs among your contemporary students at Aberdeen? Were they commonly interested or were they rather unconscious of political affairs?
R I doubt if we were very politically aware.
C Was there for example a lot of support or criticism of the League of Nations?
R I can't remember the League of Nations ever …
C It never even crossed your horizon, no.
R No. It was only after a bit that you became aware of the failures of the League of Nations in the same way as the failure of UNESCO now and of course all these things have become so politicised.
C On the side of domestic politics you mentioned that the general strike happened while you were at university. How much did that politicise people or was it just an episode which you had to live through and it was nuisance? Do you remember your reactions to that and those of your contemporaries?
R I was so annoyed. I hated travelling by bus and to find that there was no train, there was a class examination and I remember having to return to Kintore by bus on the night of the examination and for a week or so, I don't know how long the strike lasted, but we were very annoyed at the inconvenience, just the domestic inconvenience to us.
C You didn't for example feel it as, well I don't know, I find it difficult to think how one would have reacted, you didn't feel it as an important political event or …?
R Not as far as I remember, no. I always remember by parents being very anti Lloyd George and munitions or something, and giving increase in wages so much to the workers then but I mean we weren't really political people.
C Were the students generally in the university when you were an undergraduate?
R They weren't. We weren't political, no. There was no demonstrations or anything like that.
C Did you have a rectorial election for example in your time as a student?
R I can't remember that. Of course the rectors were always very important people, they weren't film stars or people like that, they were people of substance.
C What about student associations? You said you yourself worked so hard you hardly had any social life?
R I went to the Modern Language Society and that was all.
C And that met what, once a week on a Friday, that sort of thing?
R Once a week on a Friday or sometimes on a Wednesday evening.
C Were its meetings fairly academic?
R Yes. People gave papers and …
C Visiting speakers, ? sometimes?
R Yes, occasionally. It was mostly ourselves who contributed.
C So otherwise you really were just slogging away at your books, which you enjoyed by the way?
R Which I enjoyed very much. I remember once not being able to go to a meeting of the society because the road was flooded and I remember finishing a bit of Thomas Mann that evening, I was really quite enjoying it but at the same time regretting my inability to reach the Modern Language, and I think it was a musical evening too, but these were the disadvantages of living in the country.
C So in fact you spent quite a lot of time travelling each day I assume?
R Yes but it was quite pleasant.
C Did you work when you got home?
R Very much so, very much so.
C I was trying to envisage what you day must have been like. You rose early, you caught the train into King's?
R We got the train in the morning and we attended lectures and you never absented yourself from lectures.
C Was attendance compulsory or was it merely the done thing to do?
R It was desirable, it wasn't compulsory but people attended lectures, at least the group that I was friendly with. And then you had a scrap lunch.
C What you brought a piece of lunch with you?
R Sometimes you brought your sandwich with you and a cup of coffee or something like that. Then I usually went to the library in the afternoon and then back about 5 o'clock for some food and then retired to my room and worked.
C Goodness that was a hard student life then indeed.
R It was hard.
C What about the vacations? You had a longish summer vacation didn't you?
R Well one went abroad to these au pair jobs. Or once I went to France to Dijon University, three months …. Very, very useful, very fruitful.
C I imagine, yes. What was the proportion between men and women in the language classes?
R Half and half.
C Because nowadays they tend to be female dominated in French and German.
R Are they? Yes, we were half and half. The most distinguished person, whom I'd hoped would be here, was Professor Mennie. His sisters are here, I've spoken with them.
C Professor of German at Newcastle?
R Yes, and Scandinavian Languages.
C He was a contemporary of yours was he?
R Yes. He was the most distinguished member of our section. Yes, we were half and half.
C By the time you were an undergraduate I suppose there were a fair number of women students were there?
R Yes.
C So you weren't unusual in any way?
R No.
C And you didn't feel kind of beleaguered or special or different?
R No.
C I'm thinking again of this business of, which you've emphasised yourself so strongly, of your own poverty. How much were you conscious of financial differences between students?
R Oh very much. There was one girl in the class I was in, I don't think she's here tonight, and she had lovely clothes and a lot of them. Well I for example, well I mean I was suitably dressed but …
C You had no money to spend on fineries I'm sure.
R No, we didn't get many changes.
C When you say you were conscious of the differences, was much made of the differences among students?
R No.
C So it was really only something which a private individual reflected on, she's in a different position from me, that sort of thing?
R Exactly, yes.
C Presumably no students were spending money very much on amusements and trifling things?
R No. When you hear what happens now …
C All these record players and so on that was not the style at all?
R There were students naturally, I wasn't a member of the Union, they did play cards and play tennis and play golf but all these things were denied to me. Anyway I wasn't into sport.
C It doesn't sound as if you felt deprived at all?
R I didn't feel deprived. One didn't feel deprived.
C You regarded yourself as lucky to go to university?
R Very much so.
C And it was the step to a career? You saw it as a way of making yourself independent and able to support yourself?
R Yes, and I was very interested.
C Did I pick up somewhere the clue that you became interested in Italian later as well?
R I did Spanish and Italian. I did Spanish up in Orkney.
C This was after you left university?
R Yes, when I was teaching up in the Orkneys and then I continued doing Spanish when I was in that loathsome job in the West of Scotland, North College and I didn't feel stretched there so I took a correspondence course in Spanish. Then I travelled to Spain endlessly afterwards. Then about 1960 I became interested in Italian, just travelling you know.
C Yes, visiting the country and so on.
R And then got lots of friends and still have them I think that my first visit was in 53 probably 52 and then very many years, I've so many friends there. I attend weddings in France and Switzerland. It's all been very worthwhile
C It's been extremely nice talking to you.
R I'm afraid it's very long but you can scrub the tape.
End of interview
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