Student life in 1934

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1930s, books, clothing, film, food, home science, music, recreation, sports, Studholme

Margaret Foster-Barham on the 1926 Triumph 500cc motorbike she rode from Nelson to Otago. Image courtesy of Judy Hogg.

“At present I am full of ‘pep’ with lots of good resolutions for work, health, exercise, thoughts & deeds.” So begins the 1934 diary of Margaret Foster-Barham as she commenced her final year of study for the three-year Diploma in Home Science at Otago. Margaret lived at Lower Studholme, the original Studholme building (where Unicol is today). As a senior resident she now had the luxury of a room to herself, though she had mixed feelings about that. “It’s rather a pity all the old wives are so far away. However perhaps it will be better not to see too much of them. Their talk upon dress & men becomes a little irksome.”

The freshers’ welcome, held at Upper Studholme, was an enjoyable event. Margaret was impressed with the supper and recorded the menu “as it might be a suggestion for some other time.” The students indulged in oyster and salmon patties with green peas, Parker House rolls, sandwiches, peach ice cream, coffee, salted almonds and other nuts. The Dean of Home Science, the impressive American Ann Strong, then gave a talk about her recent trip, showing “photos on a moving camera.” Strong had also brought back from her trip “a fascinating new gong” for Studholme, “on which different calls can be played.” Margaret found the Dean “most inspiring”, as she “expresses ideals in just the manner I would put things if I could.”

Margaret found her workload pretty heavy at times. As part of the practical element of her home science course she took her turn, paired with another student, at housekeeping at Studholme, which included a stint of cooking dinner over Easter. Later in the year she “nearly bust with pride” when she got 80% in nutrition. Then there was dressmaking. The students all made a “body,” a basic pattern to fit their own measurements, to be used as a basis for other patterns. Margaret’s diary reveals that body image is not a new problem. “I have been working at the old body,” she wrote in March. “She is looking quite nice, though is alarmingly big. It’s rather a good thing we can’t see ourselves as others see us!!” Her sewing projects included a green woollen dress and a peach velvet dress. A green silk dress was “not too successful. Brassiere kept slipping & also straps. Very maternal effect!”

But Margaret’s life was not all work; she socialised regularly with friends, both male and female. She particularly enjoyed the “pictures”, which she attended frequently. Favourites she saw in 1934 included Bitter Sweet, starring Anna Neagle, and The Song of Songs, which Margaret found “very beautiful … in excellent taste.” It starred Marlene Dietrich: “I love her voice & figure.” Wednesday nights at the musical society were another regular highlight: “It is great fun. We are doing a very jolly ballad of Gustav Holst, called King Estmere.” There was also time for a little light reading. One favourite was “a jolly little book”: The Small Dark Man by Irish writer Maurice Walsh. It was “light & well written” and Margaret noted it would  be “rather a nice book to give for a present.”

Margaret Foster-Barham. Photograph courtesy of Judy Hogg.

Margaret also enjoyed more energetic pursuits, such as tennis, though she noted that her “tennis needs much improvement.” An outing with her friend Tony to watch motorbike racing was “exciting in patches but for the most part boring & cold.” Motorbikes were, however, an important influence in Margaret’s life. She rode her Triumph from her family home in Nelson to university, and later to her teaching job at a Canterbury school. On one occasion she fell off in the gravel at Oaro just south of Kaikoura. Local farmer Owen Stanford rescued her from the ditch and, as daughter Judy explains, Margaret showed her gratitude by marrying him!

In 1934 there were only 1237 students at the University of Otago, including 79 studying home science. Just 319 – a quarter – of Otago students were women. The campus was clearly a very different place from today, but some things don’t change. Students still struggle to balance work and play, celebrate when they get good marks, enjoy socialising and movies and music, have adventures getting from A to B, and analyse the quality of residential college food. My heartfelt thanks to Judy Hogg for sharing her mother’s charming diary and allowing us a peek into one woman’s experience of life at Otago eighty years ago!

 

Otago in fiction

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1910s, 1930s, books, campus fiction, classics, drama, film, Rhodes scholars, writers

Many talented creative writers have graced the university with their presence. Acclaimed fiction writers who studied at Otago have published in a wide variety of genres: crime novelist Vanda Symon, popular fantasy writer Juliet Marillier, master of the short story A.P. Gaskell, literary novelist Fiona Farrell, and of course the incomparable Janet Frame. Many of New Zealand’s greatest writers have also spent time at Otago, not as students, but as holders of the Burns Fellowship (a few, like Farrell and Frame, have done both). And let’s not forget the staff: did you know that the talented Liam McIlvanney, Professor of Scottish Studies, moonlights as a crime writer, or that Rogelio Guedea, senior lecturer in the Spanish programme, is a best-selling novelist in Mexico?

Despite all this creative power, the university has seldom featured as a setting for fiction; ‘campus fiction’ has not, it seems, been a popular genre in this country. That makes the 1970 novel of Dan Davin, Not here, not now, all the more interesting. The book is closely based on the experiences of Davin and his wife Winnie Gonley as Otago students of the 1930s. It centres on Martin Cody, a brilliant young working class Catholic boy from Southland. Cody is an arts student who drinks, dances, plays rugby, falls in love (more than once), writes, questions his religion, and eventually wins a Rhodes Scholarship (after failing to make it in his first attempt thanks to a rumour which, if true, would reflect badly on his moral character). Many other still familiar institutions of Otago student life are vividly portrayed in the novel: disputes within the students’ association, controversies over what should appear in Critic, slaving late at night over books, and finding kindred spirits at a religious group (the Catholic Students’ Club – now CathSoc). Of course some commonplace aspects of 1930s life have long gone, including the once ubiquitous figure of the landlady, who featured large in the lives of the many students living in private board.

University of Otago Latin picnic at Whare Flat, 1932. Dan Davin is on the far right, with Angus Ross in front of him and Christopher Johnson to Davin’s right. Other students include Frank Hall (back left), Winnie McQuilkan (centre front) and Ida Lawson (in dark jacket behind her). The Classics staff, Prof Thomas Dagger Adams and Isabel Turnbull, are at front left.
Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: 1/2-166716-F. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22884184

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of student life; as reviewer Michael Beveridge commented in Landfall, “as a novelist Davin has been a first-rate historian”. Davin is probably best known for his novels and short stories about the Southland Irish Catholic community and for his war history and novels, but Not here, not now is also well worth a read. An earlier Davin novel, Cliffs of fall, is also partly set at the University of Otago (and is still on my growing ‘waiting to be read’ list). Davin himself studied classics at Otago, went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, served with distinction in World War II, and had a long career in publishing with Oxford University Press.

A poor scholar by C.R. Allen, published in 1936, is another novel about a working class boy who gains a Rhodes Scholarship. It charts the progress of the hero, Ponto, from his kindergarten days to Oxford, with a couple of brief chapters devoted to his time at the University of Otago: lectures, football, capping and dances all feature. The novel is set in the 1900s and 1910s, and brilliantly evokes the streets and landscapes of north Dunedin prior to World War I. Though Allen had been blind since the 1910s, he knew this environment well: he lived with his family at Arana – later to become a university residential college – and studied for the Anglican priesthood at Selwyn College. Unsurprisingly, All Saints Church also looms large in the book.

Another intriguing 1930s novel is The wind and the rain, by Otago medical graduate Merton Hodge. This was adapted by Hodge from his hit play of the same name, which had an impressive three-year run on the London stage. Film versions came out in 1938 and 1959, the latter starring Alan Bates. It is a story of a group of medical students sharing lodgings and, though the setting is Edinburgh, Hodge’s colourful characters were, according to a 1930s newspaper, “moulded on personalities he met while at Otago University, one of them being a well-known doctor at present practising in the South.” If you know who that might be, I’d love to hear from you!

Can you identify any more of the students in the photograph? Do you know of any other novels with University of Otago settings which I can add to my reading pile? If so, please get in touch. Then there are the poems and films …. I’ll save those for future posts!

The history of histories

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bibliography, books, centenary, histories

William Parker Morrell, photographed in 1930 while studying at Oxford. He was Professor of History at Otago 1946-1964 and wrote the centenary history. Image Ref: 1/2-197548-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23023848

The University of Otago has a tradition of producing histories to mark significant anniversaries. A history of the University of Otago (1869-1919) by G.E. Thompson came out to mark the jubilee in 1919, and The University of Otago: a centennial history by W.P. Morrell in 1969. No prizes for original titles there. I’m told that Willie Morrell considered a title along the lines of Southernmost university, but the University Librarian (who also served as editor of the University Press in those days) did a little research and discovered one further south, in Tierra del Fuego.

Morrell was instructed to include a discussion of every professor who had ever taught at Otago in the centennial history. Fortunately for the sanity of future readers, not to mention the writer, this will not be possible for the 150th anniversary publication. In 1969 there were 4880 students enrolled at Otago: today there are over 20,000 and the number of professors has increased accordingly. Squeezing in the details of all professors did not, in any case, keep the staff happy. I’m told that not a few people were offended because they were not mentioned in the book, as they had not reached the heights of a professorial chair!

As well as the two histories of the entire university, there is a wide range of publications about the history of various departments, faculties, residential colleges, and other aspects of the university, often published to mark significant milestones. The medical school is particularly rich in published histories. One very useful – and readable – book is Ritual song of defiance: a social history of students at the University of Otago (1990), written by Sam Elworthy for the students’ association. See the bibliography page of this blog for details of some of these works – and please let me know of others!