Marjorie Boulton, 1941 First meeting Marjorie Boulton in 1945, when I was a fresher and she was already a first-class English graduate, I was immediately aware that I had encountered a true intellectual; though, unlike some people with her gifts, she had a splendid sense of humour and was also extremely modest. She had a gentleness and humanity which made her many friends, but sometimes made it hard for her to cope with the managerial aspects of life at Charlotte Mason College, Ambleside, the teacher training college where she worked from 1962 until 1971, when she returned to Oxford to undertake a DPhil. Born in Teddington in 1924, Marjorie went to Bartonon-Humber Grammar School in Lincolnshire, where her father was head. Her mother, Evelyn (née Cartlidge), came from the Potteries and Marjorie adored her. She called her affectionately ‘my little mother’ and I understood why when I met the tiny, lively-minded Mrs Boulton. She supported her daughter in all her efforts; and Marjorie’s book, Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto, first published by Routledge in 1960, has this dedication: ‘To Evelyn Maud Boulton, true follower of Zamenhof, with my thanks for everything’. Marjorie’s ideas, as with many of us of that generation, were moulded by the 1939-45 war years. In Somerville, we had endless idealistic discussions about the future of Europe and of wider humanity; and Marjorie already gave kindness and shelter to migrants from Europe and further afield. Her attachment to Esperanto resulted from her conviction that a neutral, but shared, means of communication could bring people closer together from around the world. I remember her enthusiasm in 1949 when she started learning the language, and her continued motivation in forwarding the language and developing it can be gathered from a piece in her respected 1960 life of the creator of Esperanto, Ludovic Zamenhof. She implies that the language he invented was ‘humane, creative and compassionate’, and that it was ‘internationalist and humanitarian’. These reflected her own personality; and it is unsurprising that she valued it as a means of communication with people of many nationalities, as well as a vehicle for expressing deeply held humanism.
series, as many of them were titled The Anatomy of [Poetry, Prose, Drama etc.]. The last one appeared in 1980, but some are still used. After that, Esperanto filled her horizon. She was a member of the Esperanto Academy and various other Esperanto organisations – including the Esperanto Cat-Lovers Society. Cats were another of her passions and every letter and Christmas card from her gave the news of her current cats.
Marjorie became absorbed by Esperanto and for over twenty years ran a summer school at Barlaston in Staffordshire. When she invited me to one, I was impressed by the number of countries from which the participants came. I learnt that as a non-speaker, I was a ‘crocodile’ and hastily tried to learn enough to avoid the epithet. Astonished at how easy it was, I could see the attraction. Of course, using it for basic interaction is different from being so immersed that one can express deepest feeling, as Marjorie could. I observed at Barlaston how admired and respected she was, both for her personality and her literary output in Esperanto. She wrote over twenty books of poetry, plays and essays; and later on, her work apparently led to her being considered for a Nobel prize.
Barbara Marion Mitchell (Davies, 1941)
She didn’t abandon her native tongue and her teaching experience led to her publishing a series of text-books on English Literature, mainly in what she called her ‘Anatomy’
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MARJORIE BOULTON AT HER NINETIETH BIRTHDAY SEMINAR IN SOMERVILLE
Marjorie always had a strong affection for Somerville and it was fitting that her ninetieth birthday celebration (in 2014) was held in college. Lalage Bown, 1945 Marjorie’s own account of her early years appears as ‘Life Before Somerville’ in the College Report 2009
Barbara Mitchell, born in Peterborough in 1923, was a Lit. Hum. student at Somerville from 1942 to 1947, and achieved Firsts in Mods and Greats as well as teaching Latin for two terms in a Manchester school in 1945. Her strong socialist views, developed in her student years, matured into a life-long sense of social justice. In July 1947, the same week as she received news of her First Class degree, she married David Mitchell, then in his first year as Worcester College’s philosophy tutor. Raising a family of four children took priority over a research degree, as her high-flying school and university career now encompassed the complex obligations of full adulthood. In 1949, she became college