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Magdalen Hall to Hertford College: The Early Days of the Boat Club

The first accession of 2024 is a Secretary’s Book for Magdalen Hall Boat Club, starting in 1868 and ending in1880. It is a handsome volume in good condition, covered with parchment and fastened with a metal clasp. It is unique in covering the period of transition as Magdalen Hall was incorporated as Hertford College in 1874 and a new Boat Club was formed in 1875.

‘Seven Hundred Years of an Oxford College (Hertford College, 1284-1984) ed. Andrew Goudie (1999) contains a short article on the early history of the Hertford Boat Club which refers to a lost Secretary’s Book known as ‘The Old Book’. The introduction in the second Secretary’s Book, written by the then Secretary Edward Buck, summarises the earlier history of the Club as recorded in the lost volume. From these details it seems that our recently acquired item is the missing first Secretary’s Book.

There are few entries for the years 1868 to 1875 and the Magdalen Hall Boat Club does not seem to have been particularly busy or indeed successful. In 1871 they competed in the Summer Eights race and did manage to bump St Edmund’s Hall, noting that this was the first bump made by Magdalen Hall for 20 years.

The first entry in the Secretary’s Book recording a Fours Race in May Term 1868

There are a number of blank pages left after the Summer term in 1874 and the entries do not start again until summer term 1875, after the changeover from Magdalen Hall to Hertford College:

At the first full meeting of the Club in autumn 1875 the main business seemed to be choosing the new Club colours of crimson and white. There is much discussion of what rate the Club subscriptions should be set at, and whether they should ‘in future subscribe to Clasper instead of Salter’ for boat maintenance. More importantly by the next Eights Week in May 1876 the Secretary recorded that the new crew had improved considerably and risen four places. By November 1877 a long held wish had been fulfilled with the acquisition of a new College barge.

Henry Disney & Edward Buck

Below is one of the earliest photographs in the College archives, taken in 1879 and showing a group of undergraduates. Two of these students, Henry William Disney and Edward Buck, were dedicated members of the Boat Club Committee and rowed in numerous competitions for the College and University. Henry Disney is seated 2nd from the left on the middle row and Edward Buck is at the far right hand end of the same row. Richard Dawson, who is standing on the back row, was also a member of the Boat Club Committee and appears in many of the crew lists.

Hertford College Group, 1879 [Hertford College Archives]

Edward Buck matriculated at Hertford College in 1876, a brilliant mathematician who won the Herschel Astronomy Prize in 1881. He was Treasurer and Secretary of the Boat Club for most of his time as an undergraduate and for a period subsequently. He went onto become a schoolmaster, working in Barbados for a number of years, but eventually at Christ’s Hospital in Horsham. He continued a close personal connection with the College for many years.

Henry William Disney matriculated at Hertford in 1877, also studying mathematics and taking his BA in 1880. He was a musician and keen sportsman, taking part in athletics as well as many rowing activities. In April 1879 he rowed for Oxford in the Boat Race against Cambridge University, the first member of Hertford College to do so. He went on to become a Barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in 1884 and published several legal textbooks, including ‘The Law of Carriage by Railway’ and ‘The Elements of Commercial Law’.

The Secretary’s Book records that Disney was elected Captain and Buck the Treasurer of the Club in the Autumn term of 1878. The following year (1879) Disney was re-elected as Captain and Buck became the Club Secretary. Disney was one of the Oxford team which competed unsuccessfully in the University Boat Race that year. Buck had more success, being on the winning crew of the University Boat Race in 1881, along with two other Hertford men.

Disney and Buck continued their connection with Hertford long after they graduated. Disney’s own son, Anthony, matriculated at Hertford in 1922 and was Secretary of the Club from 1922 to 1924. Buck continued his involvement with the Boat Club for many years, and the College Magazines record that the ‘Old Oxford Blue Mr Buck’ was still coaching the rowing crews well into the 1920s.

Building on Success

The years after the formation of the new Boat Club demonstrate how much the Club had improved its performance since the old Magdalen Hall days, encouraged by the enthusiastic support of Principal Henry Boyd. The races held during Eights Week in May 1878 shows the Club rising steadily up the ranks:

Bumps Chart showing the progress of the Eights Week races, contained in the Secretary’s Book

‘It is hardly possible to comment on the success of this eight. We never had a hard race, and there is no doubt we could have gone up many more places had there been more nights, as we were universally allowed to be one of the best and fastest eights on the river. A great deal of our success was due to the pains taken by Mr Lamb in coaching us, & to the assistance given him by Mr Jackson. To both these gentlemen the Boat Club owes its best thanks. We rowed in a new boat built for us by Clasper which suited us admirably’

Secretary’s Book, Minutes for Summer Term 1878

Flushed with success, in the summer of 1878 the committee decided that the members had improved enough to send a crew, including Disney, to the Henley Regatta. It’s possible that their earlier success in the Summer Eights race meant that they overestimated their abilities; as their luck ran out on the second day of the Regatta, resulting in an ignominious finish to the race. This was due in no small part to a poor choice of crew members, who struggled towards the end of their race with Columbia College:

‘Here Fenner who was very much overstrained, & indeed ought never to have rowed in this race, either fainted or lost his head, and ran them into the bank’.

Secretary’s Book, Minutes for Summer 1878

The newspaper account of the Regatta, carefully pasted into the Secretary’s book, puts it rather more kindly:

Head of the River 1881

The last entries in the Secretary’s Book finish in the Autumn term of 1880 but the Club continued onwards and upwards, culminating in their triumphant success in Eights Week of May 1881. Edward Buck rowed for the winning team although sadly for Disney he had already graduated and left Oxford by this point. Principal Boyd could not resist sending off a telegram to his friend John Egerton and former member of Brasenose to announce Hertford’s prowess. Egerton was not impressed at such a lack of tact:

‘I wonder whether you expect me to thank you for sending me that wretched telegram on Saturday night… the bump having taken place at the winning post I could have inferred for myself the fact of a fine race without being reminded of it by a telegraph boy.

I must be content that we have been bumped by Hertford College & not by “Magg’len ‘all” – I cannot well imagine a greater testimonial to the change which has come over the latter institution in its improved condition under your care, than the fact of your boat being second and probably head. Now that our chance of leadership is gone, I would sooner see you head than any other college – so if you do go up, I will in spirit join your bump supper in an extra good cup of tea. If you don’t go up I must console myself with the reflection that you probably will be more disappointed by the blight of your fond hopes, than rejoiced by the fact of having bumped Brasenose.’

Letter from John C Egerton to Principal Henry Boyd, 23 May 1881 [Hertford College Archives]

A postcard sent to Disney announced the news and summoned him back to Oxford to ‘make a row’:

Postcard sent to Henry Disney on 23 May 1881, enclosed in the Secretary’s Book [Hertford College Archives]

It’s safe to assume that Disney and Buck were present at the celebrations, including fireworks and a large bonfire whereby the students ‘burnt their boats’, which took place in Hertford Quad on the night of Wed 25th May. Quite apart from the perceived danger of fire spreading to the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian, the Brasenose crew who had broken into Hertford knocked down the College Porter. Principal Boyd seems to have taken a lenient view of the students’ activities, as he explained in subsequent telegrams to Egerton. Egerton himself wrote that he was sure the Brasenose crew only wanted to congratulate the winners, although he hoped that they were not drunk and had apologised to the Porter.

We are delighted to have acquired this volume for the College archives. The lost Secretary’s Book fills an important gap in our existing collections and is a lovely illustration of College life during this significant period of change for Magdalen Hall and Hertford College.

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Memories of 1939: Lieutenant Tom Roberts

Just a month after Britain had declared war on Germany in September 1939, a group of young men assembled for their freshmen photograph in the quad of Hertford College. In the middle of the group was Thomas John Foster Roberts who had come up from Carmarthenshire to read Engineering. On that autumn day, his carefree smile was matched by the unruly lock of hair which had escaped from his neat side parting.

Close-up of Tom Roberts (L) and Dom Mintoff (R) on the second to back row in the 1939 freshman photograph

Whatever hopes Tom had for his university education were cut short by the war. In 1940, aged 19, he enlisted with the Royal Engineers 20 Field Company, a unit which worked with infantry divisions on the ground in occupied Europe. He would have worked with his fellow “sappers” – from the French to undermine – on bridging, demolition, semi-permanent defences, roadblocks and the disposal of unexploded bombs.

Although military service took him far away from Oxford and he had had barely a year as a student, Tom remembered his experiences at Hertford fondly. Whether exploring the ancient city and its buildings or whiling away happy hours on the river, the young engineer always had his camera with him.

Dom Mintoff, the future Prime Minister of Malta and the freshman pictured to the right of Tom in the 1939 photograph, recalled their shared passion for photography.

“Roberts invited me to his rooms and […] opened his treasured album of waterfalls and mountain peaks, blossoming trees in country lanes, his father’s garden and mansions peopled with all the persons dearest to him. They were all stills, yet he imparted to every photo an artistic touch that evoked living reality.”

Mintoff, Malta, Mediterra : My Youth, Dom Mintoff (2018)

The small square prints capture an Oxford which, in 1940, must have seemed a million miles away from the war in Europe. Leaning out from the window of his college room, Tom photographed the famous Hertford bridge – less than 20 years old at the time – and the dazzlingly new edifice of Giles Gilbert Scott’s New Bodleian Library.

He also captured the luxury of leisure time which he wasn’t to have as a Royal Engineer: afternoons spent punting on the Cherwell or watching the rowers from the college barges which, in the 1940s, were still moored on the Thames.

Tom Roberts, 1940

These were happy memories which Tom took with him to the battlefield. After a day of gruelling work, we can imagine that he would take out the Oxford prints and dream of some future in which he’d be able to return to Hertford and finish his studies.

Like so many others, Tom never made it home. He was killed in action during the Normandy landings on 27th June 1944, aged just 23. He was buried at the St. Manvieu War Cemetery in Cheux.

Tom’s photographs of Oxford were returned to his family along with the rest of his personal possessions. The war had put an end to the “undeclared ambition” of “the gentlest and the merriest” of the 1939 freshmen – in the words of his friend Mintoff – “to see the name Roberts writ large on the silver screen as the cameraman of a film performed by famous stars.”

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The undergraduate Evelyn Waugh

Detail of black and white group photograph showing two rows of seated students and fellows

Evelyn Waugh is one of Hertford College’s most famous — and occasionally infamous — alumni. Waugh had originally hoped to go to New College in Oxford, but was offered a place as a History Scholar at Hertford College, where he matriculated in January 1922.

Hertford College in the early 20th Century

Waugh arrived prepared to love Oxford and was full of good intentions, but by his own later admission did very little academic work whilst at Hertford and took only a casual interest in college activities. Sadly for biographers and Waugh enthusiasts this means that the college archives contain only glimpses of Waugh during his time as an undergraduate at Oxford.

College life

Waugh arrived partway through the academic year. In A Little Learning he describes Hertford as ‘a respectable but rather dreary little college’; and it was certainly still recovering from the ravages of the First World War. Student numbers were small, buildings dilipidated and accommodation cramped.

Page from a college Buttery Book recording Waugh’s weekly expenses for the Summer term of 1922 ©Hertford College Archives
Page from Hertford College Register of Room Allocations 1915–1929, recording the rooms allocated to Waugh in Michaelmas Term 1923 ©Hertford College Archives

Dinners were less elaborate and breakfast was served in hall as a common meal — in 1921 the college magazine noted with sadness that it was ‘no longer customary to entertain to three-course breakfasts’, although lunch was still ‘consumed decently in private’. Hertford had the advantage of cheaper living costs than many of the Oxford colleges and for his first two terms at Hertford Waugh occupied relatively inexpensive ground floor rooms (Staircase III room 30) in the Old Buildings Quad.

Waugh’s ground floor room at the front of the Old Quad, possibly the inspiration for Charles Ryder’s rooms as portrayed in ‘Brideshead Revisited’ ©Hertford College Archives

In the autumn term of 1922, however, he moved to a rather grander and more expensive set of rooms in Staircase II (now the Bursary Staircase) of the Old Buildings Quad. He was to occupy these rooms for the following four terms.The other sets in Staircase II were occupied by a fellow student, Anthony Disney, and three Fellows (Denniston, Murphy & Campbell). Perhaps for reasons of economy, Waugh moved for his final two terms in 1924 to a less grand set of rooms in Staircase V of the Old Buildings Quad, known as ‘The Cottage’.

Waugh appears in only two official photographs in Hertford College Archives. He arrived too late to be included in the Freshmen photograph for 1922 but a Gilman & Soame college group photograph taken in 1923 shows a youthful Evelyn on the front row, rather too close for comfort to his history tutor and arch enemy, CRMF Cruttwell. Close by we can tentatively identify his friends Terence Greenidge and Anthony Bushell. 

Evelyn Waugh is seated on the front row, 5th from the right; in the detail he appears on the bottom right. From the left of the bottom row detail is possibly Anthony Bushell & Terence Greenidge. Behind them in the middle of the second row Cruttwell is clearly visible in academic dress, with a dark suit, white tie & gown. ©Hertford College Archives.

Waugh in the centre of the front row of this undated photograph (c. 1923), possibly of members of the Junior Common Dining Club; from a Junior Common Room photograph album ©Hertford College Archives.

Waugh seems to have taken very little part in college activities as he quickly became involved in the Oxford Union and outside societies such as the Hypocrites’ Club. He was, however, a member of the college’s idiosyncratic Fox Society, for which he became the Secretary shortly after matriculating. Waugh and his friends obviously took great pleasure in debating, as these extracts from a Fox Society Minute Book demonstrate.

In November 1923 the Society held a joint debate with Trinity College, the motion being ‘This House wishes It was still at School’.

“Mr Waugh (Hertf.) complained of the self-righteousness of the House: the first speaker had stood for Freedom, the second for Faith, and the third for Virtue. He himself stood for a reasonable standard of personal comfort. At this point several visitors had to depart as their efforts to secure this ideal had involved them with the Proctors.”

Report from the Fox Society in the Hertford College Magazine for 1923 ©Hertford College Archives

Waugh & Principal Cruttwell

Portrait of Principal Cruttwell, reproduced from the Hertford College Magazine 1931 ©Hertford College Archives

C R M F Cruttwell was a distinguished historian and Lecturer in History at Hertford College from 1912. Although he eventually became Principal of Hertford he had never really recovered from wounds and shell shock sustained in the First World War and this may account for reports of his idiosyncratic behaviour. Waugh came to Hertford as a History Scholar and was therefore tutored by Cruttwell, but Waugh’s lack of interest in the subject meant that their relationship quickly deteriorated. Waugh wrote numerous unflattering depictions of Cruttwell in University publications and his own subsequent novels and memoirs — a persistent feud which he maintained until Cruttwell’s early death in 1941.

Records in Hertford College Archives point to a different interpretation of the relationship between Waugh and Cruttwell. Felix Markham, who succeeded Cruttwell as Modern History Tutor in 1931, considered Waugh’s descriptions of Cruttwell to be a caricature and travesty of the truth and that Cruttwell had rightly considered Waugh to be a thoroughly lazy and often drunken undergraduate. The actor and theatre director Frith Banbury matriculated at Hertford eight years after Waugh in 1930, and he later wrote a brief memoir for the archives of his time at the college. In it he notes: ‘Incidentally I do not have a vivid memory of ‘Crutters’, which leads me to the conclusion that Evelyn Waugh’s demonisation of him had more to do with Waugh than with Cruttwell’.

After Hertford

News of alumni in the Hertford College Magazine ©Hertford College Archives

Waugh sat his Schools exams in the summer of 1924 and achieved only a third class. As he had arrived part way through the academic year in 1922, he had intended to complete a further terms residence in order fulfil the requirements for his degree to be awarded. However his lack of academic progress meant that his father was unwilling to allow him to stay on, and this led to him leaving without having completed his terms, and so with no degree awarded. 

Minutes of the 610th Meeting of the Tyndale Society held in 1948, recording details of a talk given by Waugh ©Hertford College Archives

From Hertford Waugh spent a short time studying at art school in London, and then took up a teaching post at a school in Wales. Recorded here as ‘Denbigh School’, it was in fact Arnold House in North Wales, which became the inspiration for his first novel Decline and Fall.

In later life Waugh was not a particularly devoted alumnus, but he did make occasional returns to Hertford, mainly to speak at meetings of the Tyndale Society. The Minutes Book of the Tyndale Debating Society from May 1948 record the text of a paper given by Waugh entitled ‘Monsignor Ronald Knox as a Man of Letters’; and he returned in 1954 to give a talk on the wines of Burgundy, ‘with five sample bottles which he distributed among members’. In a letter written in 1952 to the Bursar W L Ferrar, however, he declined an invitation to a college dinner, on the grounds that as the journey from Somerset to Oxford was more laborious than travelling to the Amazon.

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