‘The Women Are Up To Something’ Extract

Anscombe and Foot:

Collegiality and Friendship in the Somerville Quartet

Somerville’s Emeritus Fellow Lesley Brown (l) and Professor Lipscomb (r) at the SLG event

Professor Benjamin Lipscomb is a specialist in moral philosophy and the author of The Women Are Up to Something, one of two new books about the ‘Somerville quartet’ of philosophers comprising Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch.

As he told the Magazine, Professor Lipscomb had known and admired the work of these women for years, for their insights into human good and evil. But he became interested in the group as a group after reading Midgley’s memoir, The Owl of Minerva, and glimpsing how “a community of friendship that began at Somerville College led to these vital insights.” Lipscomb shared the following extract from the book, which goes some way to capturing the special dynamic of friendship and debate within the Quartet, following a recent lecture delivered to more than seventy members of the Somerville London Group. The lecture, which took place at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, was introduced by Somerville College’s Emeritus Fellow in Philosophy, Lesley Brown, a former student of both Anscombe and Foot. Philippa Foot looked haggard most days as she mounted the stairs up to Hall for lunch. When she wasn’t delivering the meticulous lectures for which she was known, she was giving tutorials, sometimes backto-back-to-back. For her colleague Elizabeth Anscombe, every tutorial with her modest number of students was an open-ended chance to do philosophy. The bulk of the tutorial load in philosophy fell to Foot. They got the best she could offer within the fixed hour, then she had to move on. She routinely filled 11 or 12 hours a week with regular lessons. Ten was a full load. For her colleague Barbara Harvey, one enduring image of Foot was “her coming into lunch after a morning’s tutorials…a look of complete exhaustion on her face.”

Students fearful of philosophy found Foot encouraging. She invariably found something to praise even in the weakest essays. But she offered criticism, too. “More than anyone in Oxford,” a student recalled, “Philippa . . . helped me to grow up. I was clever, but terribly opinionated. She wouldn’t stand for it; she insisted I justify my wilder statements, but . . . so gently that I responded.”

Some students, of course, were intimidated by Foot. Her accent and her sharp but conservative dress sense suggested primness. And most Somervillians were aware of Foot’s grand origins. As they came to know her, though, they came to rely on her. She never refused a request

Mary Midgley (left) and Iris Murdoch (right), 1938 matriculation Elizabeth Anscombe (top right), by kind permission of Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College

for counsel or support. The result was that students booked appointments at odd hours to talk about their extracurricular problems: lost love, unexpected pregnancy, harassment. She gave them time—and strength—beyond what she could spare. If she had a few minutes between tutorials, she would lie down. She would lie down during tutorials if she could, in an adjustable armchair that snapped into its reclined position with a crack like a gunshot. That was when she didn’t need to spend the hour doing demonstration logic exercises in her spidery hand.

Foot arrived at lunch most days, wrung out. And though she needed to eat, the experience of lunch in Hall was seldom rejuvenating. Thanks to an operation undergone as a child, Foot was deaf in one ear. The din of the undergraduates, resounding off the oak-paneled walls, made it hard to converse even at high table. Each day she retreated, as soon as seemed decent, down to the Senior Common Room. That was where she came back to life.

The Senior Common Room at Somerville is a grand Victorian parlor with papered walls, white wooden trim, and a rug over dark wood floors; large, 16-paned windows look out over the lawn. A miscellany of armchairs and tea tables is scattered along its length, from the entrance opposite the Fellows’ dining room to the fireplace at the far end. Flanking the fireplace is a pair of stools, upholstered in a floral pattern of red and blue over dull gold.

Afternoon by afternoon, term by term, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot made for these stools, sat down, and started talking philosophy. Anscombe generally proposed the topic. It was conversation between colleagues and friends. It was an uncompensated tutorial. In Foot, Anscombe found the kind of interlocutor she prized: someone who took philosophical discussion as seriously as she did, someone who would never yield just to please her.

In Anscombe, Foot found someone to keep her from stagnating under the burden of her teaching. There was little pressure to publish in mid-century Oxford. The corollary was that there was little time to write—or even to think about anything besides upcoming tutorials. For a few hours each afternoon, Foot’s tutorial burden vanished. Colleagues came and went, making no impression. For Harvey, this image stayed with her as vividly as that of Foot dragging herself into Hall at lunchtime: Foot revived, absolutely alert, perched on her stool as she and Anscombe sat “tearing up Wittgenstein” together. They were usually still at it in late afternoon when tea arrived. She and Anscombe sat “tearing up Wittgenstein” together. They were usually still at it in late afternoon when tea arrived.

The Women Are Up to Something is published by Oxford University Press.