| Administrative History | Edward Raven was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Humanity, teaching Latin from 1934 to his retirement. |
| Description | Interview with Edward Raven, recorded on 21st January 1985, by Colin McLaren
This is a continuation of the first part of an interview MS 3620/5
Transcript of Interview :
M Shall we continue by talking some more about the various personalities whom you encountered in your years at Aberdeen. We have talked of Principal Fyfe. What of Principal Taylor, what sort of impressions do you retain of him?
R Well I knew him fairly well from soon after the war. I didn't meet him in his earliest days here because he came back to Aberdeen after I arrived. I had a great admiration for him. He like Principal Fyfe, was of course Classics and I was able to persuade him to read a paper or two to our meetings of Classical teachers, and I think he had an interest in music which helped to make a bond between us. Yes I had a great admiration for Principal Taylor and I think his period as Principal was an invigorating one to be in. This was the time when the university was not expanding very rapidly in numbers but was introducing many new subjects and developing aspects of the university work which it hadn't done before. In my own case the Music Department concerned me very much and from the end of the war that was gradually built up till the time of Principal Taylor's death; it was reaching its heights by then. I think it was invigorating to be in a time like that when one felt that the university was being developed in that way. Things which needed to be done were being done in every direction and though there were difficulties, still the finances were not causing the trouble that they did at a later date.
M May I ask at this point, you talk of things that need to be done, you've mentioned music. What other things did you have in mind?
R Well for instance the provision of secretarial help, which was certainly an improvement, that came about the middle Fifties so far as our department was concerned and freed us from these things which any businessman had escaped from generations before. That's the kind of thing I was thinking of. Also the developments in the things which needed to be done were to move departments from Marischal to the King's area and that was going forward; that had been thought of before the war but it didn't actually happen until after the war.
M Listening to your earlier interview, I recall you hardly mentioned Marischal. To what extent were you aware of Marischal and what happened there and the community there?
R Oh well I wasn't much aware of the departments in Marischal, of course, though I occasionally came across them. I came across Rex knight occasionally for instance; but I was really mostly aware of Marischal in connection with the museum because the coin collection was down there and I did go down a fair amount to Marischal to work in the coin collection. And of course the music took place at Marischal. That was not the case before the war when we had this little orchestra, sort of unofficial little orchestra; that was in the students' union. But once the music department got going, all that was down in Marischal. It was not till about 1960 that the Music Department moved up to King's.
M When you talk of the invigorating period which Taylor inaugurated, to what extent was this Taylor's achievement by himself; to what extent was it a conjunction of other people being on the staff at the time. In connection with music for example, how would you assess the contribution of Dr Barrett-Ayres?
R Oh that was before his day mostly. Barrett-Ayres didn't become head of the department till 1956 and most of the development was under Swainson the first head of the department. He laid the foundations of both the chorus and the orchestra. More was done when Barrett-Ayres succeeded. For instance, Swainson was rather old-fashioned in a way; he went in for the great choral works like Bach; the St. Matthew Passion was done pretty well every year. Barrett-Ayres introduced operatic performances. There had been one operatic performance under Swainson by his assistant, who is now a well-known conductor, Edward Downes, who was here for two or three years in the late Forties, and he did a rather abbreviated performance of Fi aro about 1949 I think, but later on in the late Fifties and early Sixties we did a row of operas, almost entirely of Mozart I think, the main famous Mozart operas. It was difficult in a way because there wasn't a very good place to perform in. We had to perform in the Students' Union with rather primitive facilities to some extent until the Arts Centre was opened after the conversion of the church and the later performances were there, which was a good deal better. But the difficulty about that was that the people in the cast, not so much the orchestra where I was, but the people in the cast had to give up so much time to be trained to sing these parts and so on that it was difficult for them to accept the amount of time and trouble it took and so the thing faded out. The last performance we did was Cosi Fan Tutte in January of 1965 and it happened to be the week in which Churchill died. We didn't cancel the performances, we thought it was no good to do that, so we went on doing about four performances (I think it was) in the Arts Centre for the early part of the week and then we had arranged to go to Elgin to give one performance in the town hall there on the Saturday and that was the day of Churchill's funeral. I remember watching the funeral and the subsequent events, the journey of his coffin away from London, about as far as the point at which he was taken on to the Thames and all the cranes dipped in salute; at that point we had to go and catch a bus to Elgin.
M What of Principal Taylor's successor Sir Edward Wright?
R Wright, I got to know quite well in the early days because he still lived in the old Mathematics Manse, as did Professor Cameron in the next door Greek Manse, and they both used to come and play tennis. You remember the staff tennis court is at the back of those two gardens and Wright and Cameron would appear through their back gates and sometimes I remember that the Wrights would ask us into tea after we had been playing. I can't remember at this distance of time, about 50 years, many of the other people who played. I remember Eric Turner of course from my own department played. We didn't play a great deal, not very often, but still one did get to know him quite well then. One had a very high respect for his ability. In later days, as he gradually became first Vice-Principal and then Principal, one didn't come into contact with him so much. His era, well, again to some extent, in the early part of it at any rate, there were various other developments continuing from Taylor's time. For instance I remember the new advisers of studies scheme in the Arts Faculty started about 1966. It was my own Professor Watt who was to a considerable degree responsible for launching that and that was certainly a considerable improvement I think for advising students, but as one got on later in his period, well to start with, this coincided with the period when my own department was rapidly diminishing with students disappearing from the Ordinary class, so it was a bit more depressing from that point of view and financial difficulties were causing trouble. By the end of Wright's time I think there was already about ten chairs vacant from lack of funds, so through no fault of his own it wasn't quite so exhilarating as the previous reign.
M Do I understand correctly that the Principal became more remote, or someone, who had been known to you, say, on the staff, would become more remote once they assumed the Principalship; or was it purely accident that you didn't see so much of him?
R Oh I don't think it was accident. Once he became Principal one no longer saw him even on the Faculty. Of course my tennis playing days were over long before that. In fact I played very little after the war actually. No inevitably he becomes a bit more remote as Principal, doesn't he?
M Did this happen with Sir Fraser Noble who, like Wright, had been on the staff at an earlier period before leaving and then returned as Principal.
R Well of course I knew Fraser Noble because he was my own pupil. He was here in the early days before the war, but I didn't really see much of him. I occasionally met him accidentally but not more that really, but his reign was right at the end of my time and in fact went on after my time. Really it was so near the end of my time that I don't remember very much about it. Too short to make much impression I'm afraid.
M The Principals whom you have spoken of, in particular Fyfe and then Taylor and more particularly Wright, were supported by Secretaries of some weight, Colonel Butchart and W.S. Angus. Did you have dealings with them?
R Oh to a certain extent. Butchart used to come to Faculty meetings, apart from my own occasional direct dealings with him. Oh yes Butchart certainly left an impression. He was a stickler for running the university with the minimum of expense, having precious little money in any case to run it on. But he had the good of the university very much at heart one felt. He cared very much for it. Incidentally he was a great sportsman. I occasionally played tennis with him. He had a grass court in his garden in Don Street. Another sporting thing which Butchart is associated with is skiing, and I remember one snowy day before the war, it wasn't really very snowy I don't suppose there was more than an inch or two of snow, and I went out for a walk towards the Brig o' Balgownie and suddenly over this bridge appeared Butchart on his skis to get a little exercise on Saturday afternoon.
M In what ways did the financial constraints at this time show themselves in the ordinary day-to-day running of the university?
R In Butchart's time.
M Yes.
R Well the staffing was kept to an absolute minimum. I remember the library as you probably know was run by an incredibly small number of people in those days. I think the figure was about seven or something like that. That included of course the staff of the branch library down in Marischal as well as King's. How they got through the work I don't know. And in general that was the attitude; I mean the office staff down at Marischal, Butchart's own department, was kept pretty low I think. I don't know that it was very difficult to get anything one wanted. I myself had to get a little stuff for duplicating papers and after the war, when I started giving a course which needed lantern slides, I had to get funds for that, but I don't remember that it was difficult. There was difficulty in getting supplies after the war, photographic material was very short, but the financial constraints were not very severe that I remember.
M Did W.S. Angus differ in any way from Butchart?
R He was a quieter character altogether I would say, made less impression on you in that way. He again would often be at Faculty meetings, but I can't remember quite how long he continued to attend in person because eventually the Secretary did not attend himself. Angus I think was the last one who did in fact. No I don't know if I knew enough about what was going on to judge whether Angus's reign differed very much, but I think that probably the number of people being employed was beginning to go up. I mean it was under Angus for instance that secretarial help began to be available.
M Alongside those two Secretaries of course was the figure of the long serving Librarian W.D. Simpson. Did you have a close relationship with him?
R Yes I used to see quite a bit of him because he was very good about taking parties out to see castles or whatever site it might be and the Classical Society, the students' Classical Society, in those days used to have outings of this sort, not always to Classical sites obviously, but he would take us to places like Dunnottar castle or other castles which were well-known to him, and of course he was an excellent lecturer. He was a first class lecturer and had an excellent memory. One would occasionally see him when one was going out on these trips, sitting in the front of the bus and producing one of his off-prints of his numerous articles about whatever castle it was, just to refresh his memory, but once he had done that he was very good at describing things.
M How sympathetic was he as a Librarian in terms of acquisitions of a special nature?
R As far as I know he was quite sympathetic. I didn't put in a great many requests for books myself but I think he would have supported one. I do remember once suggesting to him that in the matter of periodicals, it might be a slight saving if the library became an actual member of the learned society in question, whereas our policy then and possibly now was simply to buy the periodical from them. In some cases that I know one would get a little more by being a member: they occasionally would distribute other materials as well as the actual periodical. However I don't think that suggestion was taken up.
M But the university's financial constraints that you mentioned earlier, did these show up to any degree in library policy?
R Not that I remember [in] that period very much. I think the need for cutting down periodicals - for instance there was a bad period just before I came in the early 1930s when they had to stop a lot of periodicals and that did great damage, as you know, and stopped a flow of many series - but I don't think (I don't know if I can remember exactly the dates) but there have been later scares about periodicals but I think they were mostly after his date.
M Was any teaching done in the library?
R Ah well, the only teaching I can remember in the library of course was Professor Souter's course on palaeography which took place on Saturday mornings in the Summer Term and they all sat round the big table in the Geddes room. He gave a sort of general lecture for the first hour from 9.30 and then about 10.30 they just split up and divided up into little parties I imagine and each having a reproduction of some manuscript put in front of them to practise reading for the rest of the time, an hour and a half. These lectures were attended sometimes by staff including our own staff. Eric Turner in his first year here attended that class I remember; it was the last class Souter gave - it would have been summer 1937 - and I think Eric felt that he benefited quite a bit from it.
M Did historians join too?
R I would think occasionally yes, medievalists and that sort of people would also come in, at any rate they were invited to do so by the terms of the notice in the Calendar and I think a few of them did. The Classics Honours people of course were expected to attend. I was by then busy doing research in a very different field and so I was excused for that reason.
M How close were the links between the Classics Department or Department of Humanity and I suppose the Department of Greek and teachers of the languages in the north-eastern area?
R Ah well that changed very much. Souter I am afraid was not sufficiently extrovert a character to get in touch with teachers very much, but as soon as Noble arrived he began to go round the schools and get into contact with them and it was he who was responsible for starting these meetings for Classical teachers which I mentioned to you just now. That happened after the war, the war prevented anything starting before that, and this was continued after Noble had departed. So that was quite a good new development.
M Are there any areas that we haven't covered in our conversations that you feel might usefully be explored?
R I think we've covered a good deal. I might add a brief word or to about the two earlier professors. As I think I didn't say for instance one thing about Souter. We mentioned that he was an expert on the Greek Fathers but I should have said that he was also an expert on New Testament Greek. Before he came back to Aberdeen he had been for (I think) 8 years or so Professor of New Testament Greek in Oxford. He was a Congregationalist and so he was at Mansfield College, their place at Oxford, and at the end of that time, just about a year before he came back, he produced the standard Oxford text of the New Testament which I think was quite considerably used, certainly I received it as a prize at school, indeed I received two copies, one one year, one the following year, so I have still got it here bound up carefully in brown paper so that I could use it as my regular text to use. Yes that's something that should be said about Souter, he was quite a benefactor to the Divinity people in that way. Incidentally, besides producing the text, he produced a little tiny pocket lexicon to the New Testament which my family once owned. I foolishly allowed it to be sold I think when we left our old home, but it was such a convenient little volume. Then his successor Noble, you were asking me I remember about Noble's activity in the university politics. I might mention that, besides his skill as a speaker as I mentioned before and how he trained himself as a political speaker originally, I think he was skilful at managing things when he had to introduce a proposition in the Faculty or the Senatus. I remember Stanley Potter talking to me about his tactics. When he was going to produce some motion or to speak for some motion, he preferred not to speak about it immediately I remember; he would probably be invited by the Dean to open the discussion and he would say 'Well, sir, if you don't mind, I would prefer to let somebody else start' and then he would listen to what the various others' opinions were and leave it to near the end to produce his arguments to try and win them over; he did that very well. I think the same applied in the Senate which I wasn't attending.
M Did Faculty have more power in its opinions, in the expression of its opinions in those days do you think? Or was it simply as not having been a member of Senate, you remember Faculty meetings as being?
R I don't know enough about the ins and outs of these things to judge that. My experience in the Faculty goes back to soon after the war when the Faculty was a good dealer smaller than it is in modern times, but as against those things I really haven't much idea.
M You talked of Souter's religion or interest in religion and you've talked of the music in the university. You've not mentioned the chapel or the place of the chapel. Is this something of which you have any recollection or any interest?
R Well I must confess that I have hardly ever attended the Chapel because I attended some other place of worship. At first I used to go to the Episcopalian Cathedral, being a Church of England member; nowadays I go to the local church here. We occasionally gave musical performances in the chapel and occasionally I went to hear somebody preach in the chapel but I never attempted to join the chapel choir. I think Eric Turner did when he first came here, but I appreciated the chapel as the centre of the religious side of things and as a notable building, but I'm afraid I did not attend regularly.
End of Interview |