Pembroke College Record
There can be little doubt that the source of Betjeman's enthusiasm for Pembroke was the legendary Oxford figure, Maurice Bowra, whose long reign as Warden of Wadham from 1938 to 1970 is still fondly remembered by many. As a young Fellow of that college from 1922, Bowra had struck up what was to be a life-long friendship with Betjeman in the latter's time as an undergraduate at Magdalen. In Summoned By Bells the poet assures us that he was `certain then, As now, that Maurice Bowra's company Taught me far more than all my tutors did.' In his contribution to Maurice Bowra: A Celebration (1974, p.491), Betjeman recalls, 'His favourite colleges to visit when in architectural mood were Hertford, Keble and Pembroke because he admired the members of its Common Room and Homes Dudden, its Master.' Confirmation of Bowra's admiration for the latter may be found in his own memoirs, Memories 1898 - 1939, (1939, pp.152-3) where he writes, `Another impressive head of a house was the Reverend F. Homes Dudden, Master of Pembroke. He was tall and handsome, and when I was Proctor in 1930-1, he was ViceChancellor. He entertained on a fine scale, and I much enjoyed his benevolent condescension as host. He had as a young man been involved in the Aesthetic Movement of the nineties and was reported as having said, 'I think that one ought to live beautifully.' Now he was not only an epicure, but so far as a Christian priest can be, an Epicurean. He attached much importance to his comforts and would allow no business, however urgent, to interfere with his afternoon tea...He was a considerable scholar who wrote large books in a fine rotund style worthy of the eighteenth century, to which spiritually he belonged. He was also a very able Vice-Chancellor.' Betjeman's appreciation of Pembroke may be contrasted with a very different view taken of us in Christopher Hobhouse's Oxford, As it was and as it is today, which first appeared in the year following our admirer's guide. `At intervals between 1670 and 1694 the quadrangle was
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rebuilt in a vaguely Carolean style. In the nineteenth Century, the north front was badly Gothicised, and a new wing added, the effect of which was to cramp the entrance tower into an undignified corner. The hall is also Victorian. For a century the college had no chapel, and its devotions were conducted in the south aisle of the depressing church of St Aldate, outside the gate. The present chapel was built in 1728-32. The plain classical exterior is smothered in creeper; the interior is an unpleasant restoration by Kempe, rendered worse by stained glass.' Betjeman continues, 'In the first quadrangle some rooms painted about ten years ago in perspective by Mr John Churchill when an undergraduate, are reverently kept and let to members of the college who will not be supposed to damage them.' Readers of the Record for 1979 will recall Eversley Bellfield's vivid account of what, as a freshman in 1937, it was like to be such a trusted occupant, at the mercy of those inebriated hearties who would insist on trying to hurl themselves into the inviting depths of the mural's perspective. The Record for 1992, which reported the death ofJohn Spencer Churchill, contained his contemporary, Edmund Esdaile's eyewitness account of the painter at work upon his masterpiece in 1929. A footnote to the former article recounts is subsequent fate, 'By the early 1950's, the room was so badly in need of redecoration that the Bursar, very reluctantly, had it papered over.' Having commended the College for it's vintage port, Betjeman goes on to consider our more celebrated alumni and, once again, is complimentary. `For its size Pembroke, which at its foundation in 1624 absorbed the fourteenth century Broadgates Hall, has a long list of distinguished men. It seems to have been particularly active in the eighteenth century, a century which all guide book writers of Oxford seem to despise.' From Pym to Whitefield, Betjeman's list of our worthies is the familiar one and readers of David Eastwood's 'Three Pembroke Men of the 19th Century' in the Record for 1970 will approve of the addition thereafter of `Rey'd Robert Stephen Hawker (180775), Poet, Eccentric and amiable tractarian Vicar of Morwenstow,