CHAPTER II
Gowns-woman
Oxford 1943 to 1947
Oxford does not set out to please. Freshmen arrive there for the Michaelmas term in the misty gloom of October. Monumental buildings impress initially by their size rather than their exquisite architecture. Everything is cold and strangely forbidding. Or so it seemed to me.
It had been at Somerville during bitterly cold mid-winter days that I had taken my Oxford entrance exams. But I had seen little of my future college and less still of the university as a whole before I arrived, rather homesick and apprehensive, to begin my first term. In fact, Somerville always takes people by surprise. Many incurious passers-by barely know it is there, for the kindest thing to say of its external structure is that it is unpretentious. But inside it opens up into a splendid green space onto which many rooms face. I was to live both my first and second years in college, moving from the new to the older buildings. In due course, a picture or two, a vase and finally an old armchair brought back from Grantham allowed me to feel that the rooms were in some sense mine. In my third and fourth years I shared digs with two friends in Walton Street.
Both Oxford and Somerville were strongly if indirectly affected by the war. For whatever reason, Oxford was not bombed, in spite of the presence of the motor works at Cowley which had become a centre for aircraft repair. But like everywhere else, both town and university were subject to the blackout (‘dim-out’ from 1944) and much affected by wartime stringencies. Stained-glass windows were boarded up. Large static water tanks — as in Somerville’s East Quad off the Woodstock Road — stood ready for use in case of fire. Most of our rations were allocated direct to the college which provided our unexciting fare in hall, though on rare occasions I would be asked out to dinner. There were a few coupons left over for jam and other things. One of the minor benefits to my health and figure of such austerities was that I ceased having sugar in my tea — though only many years later would I deny my ever-sweet tooth the pleasure of sugared coffee (not that there was over-much coffee for some time either). There were tight controls over the use of hot water. For example, there must be no more than five inches of water in the bath — a line was painted round at the right level — and of course I rigidly observed this, though coming from a family where the relationship between cleanliness and Godliness was no laughing matter. Not that we ever felt like complaining. After all, we were the lucky ones.
Moreover, though I was not the first member of my family to go to university — my cousin had gone to London — I was the first Roberts to go to Oxbridge and I knew that, however undemonstrative they might be, my parents were extremely proud of the fact. Before I went up to Oxford, I had a less clear idea of what the place would be like than did many of my contemporaries. But I regarded it as being quite simply the best, and if I was serious about getting on in life that is what I should always strive for. There was no point in lowering my sights. So, excellent as it was, particularly in the sciences, I was never tempted to opt for Nottingham, our ‘local’ university, even though I would have been able to live so much nearer my home, family and friends. Another aspect of Oxford which appealed to me then — and still does — is the collegiate system. Oxford is divided into colleges, though it also has some central university institutions such as the Bodleian Library. In my day, life centred on the college (where you ate and slept and received many of your tutorials) and around other institutions — church and societies — which had more or less a life of their own. As a scientist, my life probably revolved more around university institutions and facilities, such as the chemistry laboratories, than did that of students in other disciplines. Still, my experience of college life contributed to my later conviction that if you wish to bring the best out of people they should be encouraged to be part of smaller, human-scale communities rather than be left to drift on a sea of impersonality.
Perhaps the most obvious way in which wartime conditions affected the ‘feel’ of university life was the fact that so many of us were very young — only seventeen or just eighteen, and at that age an extra year can mean a great difference in outlook and maturity. Later, from 1944, the feel of Oxford changed again as older people, invalided out, started coming back from the services either to complete a shortened wartime degree or to begin a full degree course. They had been through so much more than we had. As Kipling wrote (in ‘The Scholars’) of young naval officers returning to Cambridge after the Great War to continue their studies:
By the time I left I found myself dealing with friends and colleagues who had seen much more of the world than I had. And I gained a great deal from the fact that Oxford at the end of the war was a place of such mixed views and experience.
I began by keeping myself to myself, for I felt shy and ill at ease in this quite new environment. I continued, as in Grantham, to take long walks on my own, around Christ Church Meadow, through the university parks and along the Cherwell or the Thames, enjoying my own company and thoughts. But I soon started to appreciate Oxford life. My first years there coincided with the end of the war; so it is perhaps not surprising that my pleasures were the slightly Nonconformist ones I had brought with me from Grantham. I was a member of a Methodist Study Group which gave and attended tea parties. My mother would send me cakes through the post and on a Saturday morning I would join the queue outside the ‘cake factory’ in north Oxford for an hour or so to buy the sustenance for tea that Sunday. I joined the Bach Choir, conducted by Sir Thomas Armstrong (by a nice coincidence Robert Armstrong’s father), whose repertoire was wider than its name suggested. I especially remember our performance of the St Matthew Passion in the Sheldonian Theatre, which Wren might have designed for the purpose. We also sang Prince Igor, Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande, and Hoist’s Hymn of Jesus. Sometimes I went to listen rather than to sing: I heard Kathleen Ferrier in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius.
With the end of the war and the return of the servicemen, the pace of entertainment quickened. Eights Week was revived and I went down to the river to watch the races. It was at this time that I first went out to dances and even on occasion drank a little wine (I had previously only tasted sherry and did not like it; nor do I now). I smoked my first cigarettes. I did not like them much either, though I knew I would get the taste if I persisted. I decided not to, to save the money and buy The Times every day instead. I now went to my first commem ball, and like the girl in the song danced all night. I saw Chekhov and Shakespeare at the Playhouse and the New Theatre. (Christopher Fry’s first plays were being performed at that time.) And I saw a wonderful OUDS (Oxford University Dramatic Society) production which was performed in a college garden and featured Kenneth Tynan, Oxford’s latest dandy. I cannot remember the play, partly because it was always difficult to distinguish Ken Tynan on stage from Ken Tynan in everyday life.