Judith (Mundlak) Taylor reports on the Year of 1952

The Somerville College Class of 1952

The current pandemic has made many people think about the value of their education and the importance of old Somerville friendships. In this spirit of reflection Judith (Mundlak) Taylor has compiled a report on the year of 1952. Judith herself lives in San Francisco; she and her husband have two children and six grandchildren. She has had a distinguished career as a neurologist and Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. She is now a significant horticultural historian.

A recent encounter online with a charming graduate of LMH (G. Mawrey, 1960) made me think about my own classmates and wonder where they might be now. Three of us still form a tight-knit little group which has had a round robin (e-mail) over many years as well as seeing each other whenever we could. We share our joys and sorrows and mutter about the inevitable aches and pains which are upon us all. It is, after all, sixty-eight years since we all went up.

At first we were five. There were Valerie (‘Wally’) (Catmur) Vesser, Cynthia (Coldham) Jones, Jane (Brown) Evans, Felicity (Chugg) Morrogh and me, but Jane and Felicity have both died. In addition I am independently in contact with another class member, Franziska (Zweig) Loening. Two of my other close friends had already died of cancer more than twenty years ago, Carole (Rosen) Marsh and Esther (Mond) Breuer.

Liz Cooke very kindly offered to send out a notice to the alumnae she has on her e-mail list, asking them to get in touch with me if they wished. Five responded. Between all of us we can account for about twenty of our classmates who are most probably still active. There is doubt about one or two of them. Their only contact had been a Christmas card and at least two people did not send one this last year. Looking at this statistically, there are three confounding factors which skew these numbers. One is of course death, getting closer and closer as we age. The second is the fact that people in their ninth decades are not always able to use e-mail. The third is the fact that some of the students had not enjoyed being at Somerville and do not wish to be in touch with any of us. I know of two in this category.

We all share certain things in common. Dr Vaughan was Principal, a truly amazing woman I still revere even though she contaminated a university building with so much radioactive strontium it cannot be used for the next thousand years. She had been a medic in the Spanish Civil War and learned about the huge importance of blood banks in saving lives. As soon as World War Two was declared she immediately set to and started organising a national blood bank in Britain. Coming from that environment to the molasses pace of Oxford colleges in 1947 she shook the whole place up by being the first principal to install a telephone in her office. Up until she did that little men on bicycles carried messages back and forth.

Dr Vaughan cared about us. She invited many of us to tea at her lodgings more than once. She also did yeoman service in helping to care for Elizabeth Anscombe’s seven children.

Without her stepping up like that it is possible Miss Anscombe might have ended up in jail. The child-care authorities were always popping round to see how they were.

Even if you were not a philosopher Miss Anscombe was a college fixture. She was Wittgenstein’s literary executor and had converted to Catholicism some time before. When she married Peter Geach from Cambridge at the Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge the usual crowd gathered around the door, hoping to get a glimpse of some famous person. There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. This young woman was pushing her way through, yelling ‘Let me through. Let me through. I’m the bloody bride.’

The college cellarer was Enid Starkie, fellow in French literature. Each year she travelled to Oporto to lay down the Senior Common Room’s supplies of port. She was distinctive in many ways but mainly because of the French sailor’s hat she always wore.

Three years surrounded by these and other divine eccentrics were bound to affect you even if only subliminally, and I have not even begun to talk about my classmates.

The people who responded to me were Ruth Finnegan, Anne Kirkman, Jennifer Hindell, Pippa Spring and Shirley Hermitage. I have been in the United States since 1959, as has Valerie. Shirley is also in this country, in Georgia, but likes to spend the summer in Somerset with her daughter in their joint house.

We each tried to put more than sixty years of our lives into five hundred words or fewer. As can be imagined the most important parts of everyone’s life was their family.

Jennifer is in West Dulwich with her husband. She taught English for many years while Keith was a freelance journalist. As she put it: ‘Someone had to provide an income.’

Anne had read French. She kept in touch with quite a few of our mutual friends such as Shirley Legge, Shirley Ashton, Laura Momigliano and Angela Downing.

Pippa has given a lot of her life to helping others in need, most often in her own family, even if it meant putting her own activities and desires on hold. She has mainly been involved in editing Know Britain. She wanted me to add: ‘I didn’t have aspirations but went with whatever turned up in my life. So I hold a Blue Badge, the national tourist guiding qualification, as well as a DipFE(Lond); was a Union delegate and now a member of my PCC.’ She is also in touch with Janet Draper, now Dr Harland. Clare is very proud of her children. They all attended Oxford and did very well.

Ruth read Classics but became an anthropologist specialising in Africa. She has written many books and papers and been rewarded with an OBE as well as prizes and medals. Ruth is perhaps most proud of the fact that late in her life she has discovered a great gift for fiction, writing novels and plays. They emerge from her subconscious mind without her having to cast about for themes or ideas.

Valerie has been married to Dale Vesser, a Rhodes Scholar from West Point, for more than sixty years. They have a son and a daughter. She enjoyed teaching English literature to high school and young college students in the United States. Dale was posted to various forts around the country and also served in two foreign wars. He ended up as a three-star general.

Cynthia worked in Brazil after being graduated, as is fitting for someone who read Portuguese. She was the sole undergraduate in that school and sat the exams in solitary splendour. She married there and had her two daughters. When she returned to the UK she spent some time at the Cheltenham intelligence centre but her life now revolves around her children and grandchildren, all of whom are pretty feisty. Before the pandemic she travelled very widely.

Franziska (Francesca) Zweig married the biochemist Ulrich Loening and lives in Edinburgh. She decided not to pursue medicine and stayed with chemistry. Ulrich’s work took them to the United States but eventually they settled in Edinburgh where he is still very active in environmental work. Francesca was always passionate about music and played the violin extremely well. Ulrich shared her passion and built himself a cello. For many years she taught the violin in a girls’ school in Edinburgh. They have three children and many grandchildren.

I am hoping that if anyone I have omitted sees this story they will let me know so I can continue to solidify the memories. In particular it would be good to hear from someone who recalls the bath club, that tiny group of men who were able to take a bath in college without being detected. I believe Dale Vesser was one of them. He had the pioneering spirit – his grandfather had been born under a covered wagon in Idaho.

The experience of being at Somerville has been indelible for me. The college was still all women at that time and it showed what can be done when women occupy positions of authority. The college had and still has a remarkable academic record but for me it was the other girls who were the best teachers. For a somewhat coddled and constrained only child, being free to make my own decisions, good or bad, was highly instructive and even liberating, but my father’s will remained heavily imprinted on my unconscious. When it came to buckling down to organic chemistry in the very first term I was the only one in our group who passed! Liberation only went so far.

JUDITH IN LOCKDOWN AFTER 3 MONTHS WITHOUT A HAIRCUT

You can find me at: www.horthistoria.com