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Chapter 4

YANKS AND BRITS

To sum up my impressions of Oxford I need only one short sentence-I am glad to be here. I have no doubt that my three short years at this ancient university will prove to be the most profitable years of my life. Not only shall I be better equipped intellectually, but I shall ever feel the improving influence of Oxford life, and the subtle charm of this beautiful city. I do not wonder that the sons of Oxford ever look back with fondness to their college days, and I know that I too shall look back to them with equal fondness.

Stanley Royal Ashby, class of 1906

Of course there is good cooking in Oxford, as there are crossbows and hoopskirts on sale in New York City; but in both cases you must work to find them…. [I recall] Oxford chiefly as a place where too many bells were always ringing in the rain, and the English countryside as a locale whose principal attraction lay in the fact that when you were broke you could live there for about one fifth the cost of a vac in the Continental capitals.

Elmer Davis, class of 1910

Getting Acquainted

When the first wave of Americans arrived in the fall of 1904 Oxford newspapers and magazines were filled with the same sort of warnings that had appeared after the will had first been announced. Isis published cartoons showing Rhodes Scholars lynching their dons and riding bucking broncos.¹ As things turned out, the early Rhodes Scholars did not hang anyone and brought no horses with them, but they did provide entertainment, puzzlement, and consternation. Even before their accents could be heard, their clothes gave them away. Almost invariably, they bedecked themselves in splotches of bright colors and wild plaids. In every class there were several who also sported huge Stetson hats. These gave rise to a new music hall ditty, which proclaimed, “If I only had a hat like a Rhodes Scholar, I'd be happy for life.”²

One member of the first class, William Crittenden, was a genuine California frontiersman. He carried a pistol in his trousers. One morning soon after arrival at Trinity College he became irritated when his scout was tardy in running an errand. Crittenden thereupon fired a shot out his bedroom window. That certainly roused staid, old Oxford from its slumbers. The college president immediately summoned Crittenden and requested that the gun be deposited with the college for safekeeping.³ Crittenden's classmate Henry Hinds, from North Dakota, also brought a revolver with him. Becoming bored at a lawn party for freshers, he decided to liven up the affair by shooting at the heels of one unfortunate British student, whom he chased around the gardens.⁴ Here too the college appears to have been lenient. Neither Crittenden nor Hinds was “sent down.” The former eventually got a Second in law and the latter a First in geology.

Another thing that set the Americans apart was their manners. They were louder and more outgoing than the typical British student. Another member of the class of 1904, Ralph Blodgett of Missouri, discovered this in his first evening at Wadham College. He entered the hall for dinner, marched up to a group of older students and boldly introduced himself. “My name's Blodgett,” he declared, to which they responded with stony silence and dropped jaws.⁵

Rhodes Scholars had to discover what the British already understood. New students were mere “freshers.” Only after they passed their preliminary examinations, usually at the end of the first year, did they acquire senior status. Whether they were natives or foreigners, freshers were not expected to speak to senior students unless the latter initiated the engagements.⁶

Rhodes Scholars also had to learn that in Oxford they were “commoners,” not “scholars.” The term “scholar” was reserved for those students who had won scholarships offered by the colleges themselves. These students were entitled to wear to dinner and lectures gowns that were more elaborate than those of their classmates. Through the succeeding years numerous Americans would win some of these awards in competitions held while they were in Oxford. Only these Rhodes Scholars were “scholars” in British eyes.

Britain was not so much unfriendly as indifferent. Young men who had been star athletes, top students, and home-town heroes in the States arrived in Oxford to find that the Red Sea did not part for them. They were expected to accommodate themselves to Oxford, not vice versa. A university that was accustomed to educating future prime ministers, famous authors, and members of the House of Lords was not going to become excited by the arrival of a few dozen Rhodes Scholars from the United States, Germany, and the various regions of the Empire.

In a few cases British students did go out of their way to make life uneasy for the Americans. If it was the Americans who were singled out, that was partly because there were more of them than all the other Rhodes Scholars combined. It was also because of Britain's uneasy fascination with the strapping giant of a nation that was just then emerging as a world power and possible rival. Finally, it was also because the Americans, in their personalities and their educational backgrounds, were less like the British than were most of the other Rhodes Scholars.

One American from these early years who was singled out for special treatment was the product of a big state university in the South. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a football star, and a respectable baritone. As he departed for Oxford his home-town newspaper lauded him as “the Perfect Man.” The Associated Press picked up this article, and it was published in newspapers in New York and elsewhere. Correspondents for the major London dailies were amused by it, and they cabled copies to their head offices. When the ship carrying Rhodes Scholars arrived in England, this young man was swarmed by reporters and photographers. Whereas freshers normally were ignored, the “perfect man” was invited to party after party by senior British students. It took a while for the American to figure out why he was so popular. The organizers of the festivities were charging guests a shilling for the privilege of seeing “the perfect man.”⁷

The great majority of Rhodes Scholars, however, had a less remarkable transition to Oxford life. Upon the advice of their scouts and others, they quickly relegated their fraternity pins, Stetsons, turtleneck sweaters, and brightly colored pants and shirts to storage trunks. Using the first installment of their stipends, they rushed to the gentlemen's shops on the High to purchase gray flannel pants (“bags”) and tweed jackets.

One newcomer had nearly the reverse experience of Crittenden and Hinds. Just as Hugh Moran of California was moving into his rooms at Wadham in October 1905, he was greeted at the door by a fellow of the college. The gentleman had heard that Moran was from the western states. The visitor inquired, “And I say, do tell me, did you ever know Billy the Kid?” The don was somewhat disappointed to learn that Moran did not know the famous outlaw. However, at least the American was able to say that he had been reared in cattle country.

The don introduced himself as R. B. Townshend and astonished the American by announcing, “Some years ago I had a rahnch-a horse rahnch, in Coloraydo. Glorious country that!” Townshend then related his personal background. He had always considered himself an outdoorsman, and after graduating from Cambridge he struck out for Colorado. He took up horse ranching: “not thoroughbreds, you know, but mustangs and cow ponies, and all that. Those were the days…. Cattle coming in from Texas, and plenty of holdups and cattle rustling.”⁸

Upon the death of his father, the disconsolate Townshend had to return to England. There he married a lady “of some substance and excellent family.” The new Mrs. Townshend refused to go to America, and so they settled in Oxford. Townshend took up the life of an Oxford don, tutored in the classics, and wrote scholarly books. On the side he published children's adventure stories about the Wild West.

Townshend invited Moran to his home for the following Sunday afternoon. The don lived just up the Banbury Road, one of the major avenues passing through the city. To his astonishment, Moran was told to expect some horseback riding and “a bit of roping.” When he arrived at the “rancho,” Moran was taken to the back garden, for some roping and “a bit of a shoot.” In the “corral” Moran discovered that the horse was made of wood and the steer that would be roped was a log with some branches serving as horns. Moran then proceeded to have a try at roping, managing to bring the “steer” to the ground on his third try. Townshend then introduced the visitor to a motley group of neighborhood boys, who formed a sort of boys' scout troop. Producing a pair of .22 caliber rifles, Townshend guided his scouts through a session of target practice.

Moran's fast friendship with this unusual rancher/don was exceptional. Most American Rhodes Scholars experienced something between the warmth of Moran's welcome and the rude treatment of “the perfect man.”

Most also adjusted to the fact that British aloofness resulted more from reserve and timidity than from any sort of anti-American animus. Reminiscing decades later, one American admitted that his first two terms were torture. He got along well once he learned to tame his American “enthusiasm” and accept British indifference to his superior achievements in his pre-Oxford existence.⁹ Also the Americans had to break their habit of yelling to each other or to British students while out on the streets. One of the early scholars later noted that the best advice he had ever received on how to adjust to British customs and sensibilities was always to keep his fork in his left hand and his tongue in his cheek.¹⁰ Some Americans never made the adjustment. Of the class of 1904, one young man who could not adjust to Oxford committed suicide-a second died of natural causes. Another was so overworked in his studies that he had a nervous breakdown that turned out to be permanent. Each succeeding year there was at least one American who resigned the scholarship and returned home early. Every year or so there was also someone who got married and thus had to relinquish the scholarship.¹¹

Other Americans went to the opposite extreme. They donned plus-fours, carried canes, and affected British accents. What were natural habits for the British became artificial mannerisms for their American emulators. One of the most outlandish of these specimens was Edwin Hubble (1910). Soon after he moved into Queen's, he adopted a British accent that he would keep the remainder of his life. He punctuated every sentence with anglicisms like “jolly,” “ripping,” “splendid fellows,” “chap,” and “bah Jove.” When he arrived back home in America, his family was shocked to see him in plus fours and a flowing cape.¹²

Perhaps with little comprehension of what the words meant, these fake Britons marched around singing “Gaudeamus Igitur” with more fervor than any native would have displayed.¹³ Some of these types also outsnobbed British students in looking down at some of their fellow Rhodes Scholars – those who were not from the “good” universities back home or who refused to smooth their rough American edges while in Britain.¹⁴

One of the pleasures of being an Oxford student that the Americans soon came to enjoy was being regarded as a gentleman all over town. Scouts, porters, shopkeepers, and waiters called them “sir.” This was part of the deference given by the working classes to their “betters.” Gentlemen often did the most ungentlemanly things, but this could usually be forgiven or accepted, provided they did them with style and paid their bills – though these need not be paid immediately. Rhodes Scholars discovered that their new status enabled them to run up tabs at the tailors, in Blackwell's bookshop, in restaurants, and in virtually every other commercial establishment. Of course, they were expected to pay up by the end of the academic year. Many businesses were exceedingly patient in this matter.¹⁵

Another feature of Oxford life that Americans readily enjoyed was the pervasive alcoholic haze that hung over the place. Most Americans, that is. Two or three members of each class were teetotalers, especially those from prohibitionist states like Kansas. These few stuck out as curiosities both to their fellow Americans as well as to the British. Tobacco, beer, wine, sherry, and brandy were staples in the rooms of nearly every undergraduate. Replenishing these supplies was usually the job of the scouts. Rhodes Scholars together with other students usually gathered each evening in one of their rooms, to talk, sing, smoke, and drink. This was the socializing factor that had been so important in Cecil Rhodes' thinking when he established the scholarships.

The students usually drank hefty amounts of beer with their evening meals in the college halls. Anyone who committed a faux pas or became the butt of a joke had to drink an entire tankard of ale without taking a breath; this was called “sconcing.” If a college's boat won the Eights races, becoming “Head of the River,” both dons and students would enjoy a tumultuous Bump Supper in the college hall.

Students were not, however, permitted to enter any of the public houses (that is, pubs) in town. The university proctors and the colleges fined any student caught in those premises. This prohibition did not result from any desire to protect innocent youths from the demon alcohol. Rather, it derived from two other factors. One was the goal of protecting young men from women “of the wrong sort.” The other stemmed from the separation of social classes in England. “Gentlemen” did not socialize with the working classes in public establishments. Instead, they drank at home or in their private clubs. Oxford students could drink in their rooms, in the JCRs, and on the college barges moored on the Isis near the boat race area. First-year students often got to know one another by partaking in “freshers' drunks.” The ubiquitous parties held at the end of each term were “jolly ups.”¹⁶

Each college had a variety of student clubs and societies. Officially these organizations were for the purpose of debates, chess, bridge, and fine dining. Unofficially, some of them were mere excuses for getting drunk. Many a Rhodes Scholar marveled at the frequency by which club meetings turned into saturnalia, with participants breaking all the glasses and furniture in sight. (The colleges added the cost of repairs to the battels each student had to pay.) There were numerous student clubs that rented rooms from private landlords in the town. The most exclusive was Vincent's Club, in which students usually dressed formally for gourmet meals. The rowdiest was the Bullingdon Club, whose exploits have been recorded in fictionalized form by Evelyn Waugh and numerous other writers. Many of these clubs survive today, though their exploits have become less raucous.

The feature of Oxford life that perhaps was most peculiar and confining for Rhodes Scholars was the myriad of rules regarding comings and goings in each college. Most Rhodes Scholars were between twenty-two and twenty-four years old when they arrived, whereas the typical British fresher was eighteen. This age difference not only created a barrier in social relations, but it meant that older men were subject to rules designed to control freshmen. Many of these regulations were no worse than those in effect on American campuses through the first half of this century, but they seemed onerous to Rhodes Scholars.

The colleges were male bastions, and academic study was meant to be a semi-monastic vocation. Thus one was not permitted to bring women into college, except on a few special occasions per year, and then only for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Most colleges required attendance at chapel each morning, though in many cases non-Anglican students could petition for exemption. Some rules had, as one bemused American stated, “the pleasant savour of antiquity.”¹⁷ These included the prohibitions on playing marbles or shooting arrows in the High Street. Others were more irksome. For example, one could be fined if caught playing billiards after 10:00 p.m. or if one were spotted walking in town after dusk without wearing one's gown. A student generally had to ask permission if he wished to be outside college after 9:00 p.m. Then there were the gates. For reasons of security, going back centuries, the colleges still locked their front gates each night, usually at midnight. Dons could ring the front bell and be admitted after that hour. But students who returned after midnight or who stayed out all night were fined heavily or “gated” – that is, forbidden to leave college for several days. No wonder that some Americans considered their new homes to be more like prisons.

Joiners or Outcasts?

Once the initial fears of a Yankee invasion had been overcome, how did the Americans get along socially with their fellow students and others whom they met? By the end of their first or second terms, the overwhelming majority did splendidly. The record through the First World War shows steady involvement in a broad range of social activities. Several were elected to the presidency or other offices in their JCRs. Many were active in their college debating societies. William Bland (1910) had the distinction of becoming the first American elected to the presidency of the Oxford Union.¹⁸

Lawrence Henry Gipson was a member of the Lincoln College Sunday Evening Debating Society. One week he was asked to join a debate and take the position that Great Britain, having lost the United States, should dissolve its Empire and grant independence to all its colonies. Gipson gamely took up the challenge, though he was vehemently booed by other students. A week later, news of the debate having spread, Gipson also gained the wrath of Rudyard Kipling. Despite this, however, Gipson loved his Oxford experience. That debate sparked his interest in the topic and led him, later in his career, to embark on his Pulitzer Prize winning fifteen-volume series The British Empire before the American Revolution.¹⁹

Franklin Russell (1911) rowed for Brasenose, but he achieved his greatest popularity through his championship skills in chess. He amazed fellow students by his ability to play several boards simultaneously-while blindfolded. He played “Board 1” on the Oxford chess team in matches against Cambridge and was one of the top boards in the combined Oxford-Cambridge teams that played matches against London clubs. He also participated in the all-England team in contests against Scotland.²⁰

Frank Morley (1919) became active in political and social causes and was one of the founders of the Oxford Labour Club.²¹ Other Rhodes Scholars succeeded in introducing some American customs to their new friends. Southerners, for example, helped to make mint juleps a popular drink among many undergraduates. Rhodes Scholar singing groups like the Oriel Quartette introduced Britons to ragtime.²² During the course of his three years in Britain nearly every Rhodes Scholar was invited on several occasions to spend weekends or parts of the holidays in the homes of his British classmates or other Britons who wanted to offer hospitality to the Yanks.

One Rhodes Scholar ended up marrying the daughter of his scout.²³ That shows how well many of the Americans were getting along socially. Yet, ironically, it also indicated that they would never get absorbed completely into British ways. This union of the educated elite with a member of the domestic servant class was something that the typical Oxford student would never consider.

Some Americans were so active socially that it is amazing that they kept up their studies. Whitney Shepardson (1910) was on the rowing, rugby, and tennis teams for Balliol, secretary to the Arnold Society, president of the Brakenbury Society, and a member of Vincent's Club. Yet he won the prestigious Gladstone Memorial Prize for an essay he wrote and obtained a First in Modern History. The most anglophilic of the early scholars and the one who attracted the most attention was Christopher Morley. He was the oldest of the three Morley brothers to win the scholarship. Their parents had emigrated from Britain to the United States in 1887. The father, Frank Morley, Sr., was professor of mathematics at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. In 1900 the family moved to Baltimore, where Professor Morley joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University. All three sons, however, returned to Haverford for their college education.²⁴ Chris (or “Kit,” as his English relatives called him) was a thoroughgoing American and yet was to have a lifelong love of all things English. He was enchanted when he first entered New College in 1910. He never tired of showing visitors the magnificent gardens, the medieval tower, the cloisters, and the well-known Warden: Rev. W.A. Spooner, or “the Spoo,” whose spoonerisms added luster to the already venerable institution. Even as a student Morley possessed the rotundity that would later be part of his fame, but he cheerfully tried to do his part in college sports. His chief interests, however, lay in activities like afternoon teas in country inns, debates, and discussions at the college literary society. His first book, a collection of poems entitled The Eighth Sin, was published by Blackwell's while he was still in Oxford.²⁵

Despite the evidence for the Americans fitting in socially, there were nagging problems that refused to go away. From the beginning, the newcomers were thought to be too cliquish. The Americans hung around too much together rather than blending in with other students. They even experimented with a variety of nicknames that would set them apart: Rhodesters, Rhodesmen, Rhodents, Rhodians, Rhodensians, Rhododendrons.²⁶ Rhodes Scholars clustered together each week in the homes of three different ladies who came to be their “mothers” away from home. Miss Crocker, Miss Guiney, and Mrs. Thayer were Americans who lived in Oxford. They delighted in giving food and entertainment to their homesick young countrymen.²⁷

Starting in 1904 and continuing for several years nearly all the American scholars pooled their funds, hired rooms at the poshest hotel in town (the Randolph), and commissioned the preparation of an American-style Thanksgiving feast. The usual meal consisted of “mock turkey,” Brussels sprouts, potatoes, and “American ices” (i.e., ice cream). The Americans hoped that perhaps within a quarter of a century they might be able to train the English chef to match the standards of American culinary excellence.²⁸

The thing that seemed most anti-social was that the Americans formed their own clubs. Some were short-lived, like the Hermit Crabs, a literary club formed in 1912.²⁹ The one that had the most members and lasted longest was the one whose very name trumpeted its foreignness: the American Club. It survived from 1904 to 1926 and would reappear, sometimes under slightly different names, on and off until the 1980s. This club's headquarters was usually a nondescript set of rooms rented somewhere in town. There one could usually find American magazines and newspapers scattered around on tattered furniture. College pennants were tacked to the walls. The highlights of the year were the two or three times when famous Americans who were visiting Oxford might stop by and give a little speech. In the years prior to 1914 the club was visited by such persons as Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Jennings Bryan.³⁰

Occasionally British opposition to the club became serious enough to cause major concerns for George Parkin and Francis Wylie. They had their misgivings about the organization, but they did not interfere.³¹ In October 1910 Daily Mail declaimed:

…the American Rhodes Scholars…do not foster that good understanding [with the British]. As one of the Oxford undergraduates he should join in their social life. He should make friends with them, should in fact become their brother during his three years at the University. He does none of these things. After the first week at Oxford the American murmurs at British insularity and retires into his shell, the American Club, where he reads American newspapers, discusses American politics, sings American songs and might just as well be back in America for all the good he does himself in Oxford.³²

This article produced a flurry of debate both in Britain and the United States and created the biggest crisis faced by the young program. The New York Times ran a series of articles with titles like “Rhodes Scholars Disappoint Oxford.”³³ One Rhodes Scholar voiced the opinion of all his classmates when he reacted to the Daily Mail: “Oh, it makes us hot!” The Americans noted that most of them participated widely in British sports and social clubs. What was wrong, they asked, if occasionally they gathered among themselves to read and talk about home?

Despite this controversy, the American Club survived. The Daily Mail article clearly exaggerated a criticism that only a few Britons had about only a few the Americans. Furthermore, more rational observers agreed that a small group of people from any nation might tend to band together occasionally if they found themselves living together in a foreign land.

The American Club was little different from what the British students themselves sometimes did. Those who had become friends at Eton or other public schools often stuck together and formed their own clubs in Oxford. Here again it was the Americans on whom the spotlight shone. They were from that upstart, rambunctious world power that fascinated, and, sometimes, repelled Europeans. Rhodes Scholars from elsewhere came from less important nations and were too small in number to attract the kind of attention that Americans did. At the same time that the American Club was formed, scholars from British dominions formed a Colonial Club, and the Germans had their own club. Yet these clubs attracted virtually no attention or controversy.

The Issue of Race

One of the least happy of the early Rhodes Scholars was Alain LeRoy Locke (1907). He was black. Those who did the most to ostracize him were not the British, but his fellow American Rhodes Scholars. He had been born and raised in Philadelphia, where his father was a lawyer and his mother a public school teacher. He obtained his B.A. at Harvard, where he made Phi Beta Kappa. That in itself was remarkable, for until the 1960s no more than two or three blacks could ever be found in any of the top American universities. Locke decided to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship because he wanted to study the issue of color outside the United States.

Since 1904 the American selection committees had wondered whether blacks were eligible to apply. Whenever they asked the Rhodes Trustees, the latter always said “yes.” The trustees cited Rhodes' will, which said that neither race nor religion should be an issue-though, as noted earlier, Rhodes had never envisaged this clause including blacks.

At Harvard Locke scored first in the qualifying exam, beating seven white students. He chose to apply from his home state of Pennsylvania. The selection committee there had received such laudatory reports about him from Harvard that they made up their minds in his favor even before seeing him. They were shocked to discover that he was black, but they concluded that this should not serve as an excuse to reverse their earlier decision.³⁴

When the news of his election spread through the United States and Britain, the reaction was swift. Newly elected Rhodes Scholars and those already in Oxford, particularly those from southern states, protested the inclusion of a Negro in their “brotherhood.” Some threatened to resign. A delegation went from Oxford to London, where they presented their case to the trustees. The latter, however, stood behind Rhodes' will and refused to invalidate Locke's award.³⁵ After Locke received the scholarship, he proceeded to apply for admittance to an Oxford college. Five colleges rejected him, on the basis of his race. One wonders how they knew in advance that he was black. It must have been Francis Wylie who, for whatever reason, mentioned it. The rejection by five colleges was unusual, because every Oxford college at that time had at least a handful of blacks or persons of “color.” These were students from the British Empire in Africa and Asia. At any rate, we shall never know all the details. Locke finally was accepted by Hertford College.³⁶

After arriving in Oxford, Locke was denied membership in the American Club, which meant that he also was excluded from the annual Thanksgiving feast. His three years in Oxford were lonely. There is no evidence from that period or from later decades that any of his classmates ever befriended him. His name is absent from their correspondence and publications. In 1908 at Thanksgiving the guest speaker was to be a don from Balliol. Upon discovering that Locke was not invited, the don backed out and hosted a special dinner at his college to which he invited Locke and all the other Rhodes Scholars. Americans from the southern states boycotted that affair.³⁷

Locke's frictions with his classmates probably also stemmed from his homosexuality, though he never “came out” in Oxford. Indeed, he was still grappling with his sexual orientation during that period of his life. Perhaps his classmates did not even realize he was gay. But obviously he was a dandy. After George Parkin first met Locke he commented that the young man had “the grace and politeness of manner of a Frenchman or an Italian.”³⁸

Locke's foppish manners enabled him to mix well with many British students. From the late nineteenth century at least until the 1930s Oxford students were divided into three types. In the middle were the great mass who had no strong eccentricities or distinctive lifestyles. On the two extremes, numbering perhaps ten to twenty percent each, were the “hearties” and the “aesthetes.” The hearties were what we today call the jocks. They played in the rougher sports and belonged to clubs like the Bullingdon rather than to the debating societies. The aesthetes dressed well, had exaggerated mannerisms, and favored poetry, refined dining, and the gentler sports. In the last decades of the nineteenth century the most famous aesthetes were the Brasenose don Walter Pater and the Magdalen student Oscar Wilde. In later decades aestheticism was personified most famously by Harold Acton, a student in the 1920s, and by the character of Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. The popular assumption was that all the hearties were lustily heterosexual and the aesthetes gay-though by no means was this always the case.

Locke also formed close associations with some black and colored students from Africa and India. Much of the inspiration for his later career as a spokesman for the “New Negro” came from these acquaintances. They taught him about the magnificent cultural accomplishments of non-whites.

In addition to the antipathy Locke faced from his fellow Americans, he experienced other problems. He started out reading Greats but soon realized that his command of Latin and Greek was insufficient. He then switched to philosophy. At the end of his third year he was not ready to take his exams. Instead of completing his work at Oxford, in 1910 he enrolled at the University of Berlin. There too, he failed to get a degree, but he did complete a long paper that he submitted in Oxford as a thesis for a B.Litt. Oxford, however, deemed the thesis inadequate, and Locke returned home in 1912 with no degree to show for his five years away. He appears, however, to have had cordial relations with Parkin and Wylie and with his tutors. In 1918 he obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard, though in the 1920s he considered returning to Oxford to obtain a degree there. Academically, therefore, Locke's experience in Oxford produced no concrete results but appears to have been beneficial and not altogether unpleasant.³⁹

On the other hand, Locke did encounter social problems while living in Britain. He called Oxford the “Imperial Training School.” He disliked the British sense of superiority and paternalism, particularly as it applied to any foreigners whose skin color might indicate that they were from the colonies.⁴⁰

On the whole, however, he found that few Britons exhibited the racial prejudices held by most Americans. This caused a different sort of problem for him. Within weeks of arriving in England, Locke published a magazine article entitled “Oxford: By a Negro Student.” For the most part the essay was a balanced, even favorable, description of Oxford society and traditions. However, near the end he addressed the question of race. He acknowledged that in Britain there were “no race distinctions” and “no race curiosity.” In short, his race was not an issue in most of his social dealings. This bothered him, because his blackness was important to him. He asserted that

One cannot be neutral toward a class or social body without the gravest danger of losing one's own humanity in denying to some one else the most human of all rights, the right to be considered either a friend or an enemy, either as helpful or harmful. So for the good of every one concerned, I infinitely prefer race prejudice to race indifference.⁴¹

He feared being engulfed in a homogeneous mass. Oxford thus helped to instill in him the germ of his ideas about black pride and creativity.

Should one condemn the white Rhodes Scholars for their racism? A handful of them opposed the exclusion of Locke from the American Club, but none appears to have gone out of his way to befriend him. Locke died in 1954, and the American Oxonian published an obituary. Generally such pieces were written by fellow classmates or by other Rhodes Scholars who had come to know the deceased well. In contrast, the person who wrote this one appears never to have known Locke personally. The obituary praises Locke for his professional accomplishments, but it has none of the intimate reminiscences typical of other obituaries printed in the magazine.⁴²

Distasteful as their attitudes seem for us today, the Rhodes Scholars who shunned Locke were acting as most Americans would have done at that time. Blacks were excluded from many jobs, schools, clubs, and restaurants even in the northern states. Not long before Locke went to Oxford, President Theodore Roosevelt had brought a storm of criticism upon the White House by inviting Booker T. Washington to lunch. Thus Rhodes Scholars were no worse than most of their contemporaries, but neither were they in the vanguard of change.

In the aftermath of the controversy sparked by Locke's appointment, selection committees avoided doing anything to encourage blacks. No records were kept about the race of applicants, but few, if any, blacks applied for the scholarships over the next half century. There were relatively few blacks in American colleges, and most of them were in Negro colleges or state universities – hardly the kinds of institutions that produced most Rhodes Scholars. Not until 1963 would there be other black American Rhodes Scholars.

NOTES

1. Richard Harrity, “63 Years of Yanks at Oxford,” Look, 4 October 1966, 82.

2. Ibid.; TAO, 1 (1914): 43; 38 (1951): 84.

3. TAO, 49 (1962): 199.

4. TAO, 51 (1964): 240.

5. Elton, First Fifty Years, 88.

6. Stanley Royal Ashby, “An American Rhodes's Scholar at Oxford,” MacMillan's Magazine, n.s. 1 (1906): 182-83; Parkin, Rhodes Scholarships, 195.

7. Mackaye, “What Happens,” 11. Unfortunately, Mackaye does not provide the name of the Rhodes Scholar in question.

8. TAO, 45 (1958): 63.

9. TAO, 26 (1939): 18–19.

10. TAO, 56 (1969): 238.

11. TAO, 50 (1963): 70; Mackaye, “What Happens,” 11. Also see various issues of the Alumni Magazine and the early pages of A Register of Rhodes Scholars, 1903–1981 (Oxford, 1981).

12. Gale E. Christianson, Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae (New York, 1995), 64, 76, 84, 87; TAO, 66 (1979): 122.

13. TAO, 52 (1965): 218.

14. Alumni Magazine, 3 (January 1910): 24.

15. TAO, 68 (1981): 159; 76 (1989): 158.

16. TAO, 2 (1915): 21; 25 (1938): 176.

17. Ashby, “American Rhodes' Scholar,” 183.

18. Alumni Magazine, 6 (1913): 4.

19. TAO, 56 (1969): 225–29.

20. TAO, 65 (1978): 307.

21. TAO, 27 (1940): 174.

22. TAO, 43 (1958): 143.

23. Mackaye, “What Happens,” 11.

24. Frank, Jr., started at Haverford but finished at Johns Hopkins.

25. TAO, 54 (1967): 159–60.

26. Alumni Magazine, 4 (1911): 23; NYT, 2 October 1910, 12; TAO, 8 (1921): 109, 13 (1926): 16.

27. Thomas Daniel Young and George Core, eds., Selected Letters of John Crowe Ransom (Baton Rouge, 1985), 47, 48; Alumni Magazine, 6 (April 1913): 36; TAO, 14 (1927): 19, 37 (1950): 18–21, 65 (1978): 110.

28. Alumni Magazine, 1 (December 1907): 12; 2 (January 1909): 5–6.

29. Young and Core, Selected Letters, 47, 48.

30. Alumni Magazine, 3 (January 1910): 1; TAO, 1 (1914): 18, 2 (1915): 40; 68 (1981): 159-62; Young and Core, Selected Letters, 35–36; Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 61.

31. Parkin, Rhodes Scholarships, 201; Elton, First Fifty Years, 89–90.

32. Quoted in TAO, 68 (1981): 161.

33. NYT, 2 October 1910, 12; 11 October 1910, 4; 16 October 1910, sec. 5, 9.

34. Jeffrey C. Stewart, “A Biography of Alain Locke” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1979), 105–7.

35. Elton, First Fifty Years, 99–100.

36. Leonard Harris, ed., The Philosophy of Alain Locke (Philadelphia, 1989), 294.

37. TAO, 66 (1979); 125; Stewart, “Biography,” 111–13.

38. Stewart, “Biography,” 142.

39. Stewart, “A Biography,” 122.

40. Alain Locke, Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (Washington, DC, 1992), xxxvii, 29, and passim.

41. Alain Locke, “Oxford: By a Negro Student,” Colored American Magazine, 17 (1909): 190. (Reprinted from Independent.)

42. TAO, 41 (1954): 258–59.