Academic adventures in Bloomsbury / [Thomas Lloyd Humberstone].

  • Humberstone, Thomas Lloyd.
Date:
1951
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Academic adventures in Bloomsbury / [Thomas Lloyd Humberstone]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ♦ ACADEMIC ADVENTURES IN BLOOMSBURY My safari to Bloomsbury was made at the beginning of the grim month of August, 1914. I had completed ten years’ service as one of the three academic secretaries of the University of London, then administered in the Imperial Institute, and had attained the maximum salary under the scale. In addition to academic administration of which I did a full share, I was Military Secretary and Quarter¬ master of the Officers Training Corps, Secretary of the Faculty of Arts,The Brown Institution, the Physiological Laboratory, the University of London Club Organiza¬ tion Committee, the last unofficial. Too many masters ! The position became intolerable. The complications were sympathetically considered by the University and the Senate gave me an independent appointment as Military Secretary. This appoint¬ ment was combined, by permission of the Senate, with the Residential Secretaryship of the University of London Club opened at 19 and 21 Gower Street in August, 1914. I abandoned a comfortable little house at South Kensington and accompanied by my faithful housekeeper, Miss Payne, trekked to Bloomsbury to face its unknown perils. Under official pressure the O.T.C. headquarters for administrative purposes removed to 46 Russell Square in the autumn of 1914. The omens for migration to Bloomsbury were not propitious. According to an announcement in The Times on May 15th, 1912, a body of trustees had been appoint¬ ed, presided over by R. B. Haldane, for the purpose of acquiring a site in Bloomsbury for the new headquarters recommended by the Royal Commission (the Haldane Commission). It was stated that the Chancellor of the University, Lord Rosebery, would represent the University on that body. Strong feeling was aroused in the University because it was thought that the Chancellor had committed the University to a site without authority; this. Lord Roseber)^ denied. The Vice-Chancell6r (Sir William Collins) submitted his resignation, afterwards withdrawn. Sir Edward -Busk, Chairman of Convocation, made strong representations. Lord Rosebery wrote to him under date April 12th, 1912, that, on being asked to be a trustee for a large sum of money to be collected for the University, I accepted at once and never gave the matter a second thought.” He added that the trustees never met, and the matter passed out of his mind. On March 25th, 1912, it was announced that the total offered towards the new site was ;^305,000. In the result, the generous con¬ tributions to the fund were returned to the donors. A similar incident had occurred a few years previously in relation to the proposed Institute of Medical Studies, the donors in this case including the King for a hundred guineas. What had happened to previous academic wayfarers in Bloomsbury ? Thomas Campbell, who contributed to The Jaimes in 1825 the famous letter from which the University of London,afterwards called University College, originated,trav¬ elled two hundred miles in a “ bone-shaking and uncomfortable coach ” to Berlin to measure the rooms in the palace given by the King for Berlin University ; wishing for the first time he were a King able to give a palace for London University. ■” A simple, sensitive creature,” according to Francis Place, Campbell felt he had