St John’s College Library Newsletter L
LENT 2022
VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2
Johnian Winter Olympians With this year’s Beijing Winter Olympics having recently drawn to a close, we have checked our biographical records for past Johnian involvement in the Games. There has been much talk of the artificial snow at Beijing 2022, but it was used for the first time at Lake Placid 1980. Most Johnian Winter Olympians have preferred ice to snow, despite the fact it is unlikely any of them experienced playing ice hockey on the Cam, as this photograph, probably from the winter of 1947, depicts. The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924, and four years later our first Johnian Winter Olympian competed with the British Ice Hockey team at the 1928 games in St Moritz. Canadianborn William ‘Bill’ Speechly (1927) was netminder for both Cambridge University (two Varsity match victories for the Light Blues against Oxford, one as Captain), and Great Britain (fourth in the Olympics). Rollo Brandt (1955), as well as taking part in the more traditional Johnian sports of rugby and rowing, was a member of the British Bobsleigh team which came 12th in the four-man bob at the Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Olympics 1956. Another Johnian four-man bobsledder and luger, Norman Barclay (1943), was part of the British team at two Winter Olympics, Innsbruck 1964 and Grenoble 1968. After being injured at Innsbruck, Barclay gave an interview to the BBC from his hospital bed suggesting the only uninjured member of the team should not use his brakes on the Olympic run to win a gold medal for Britain (his comment may have been fuelled by the whisky his friends apparently smuggled into the hospital). The extreme sports enthusiast did the Cresta Run, raced powerboats and cars, became the first person to waterski from Scotland to Ireland, and the first to pilot a hot air balloon over the Alps into Italy during winter.
Mark Hatton (1995), an athletics (pole vault) and ice hockey blue, is one of Britain’s most successful lugers and competed in Salt Lake City 2002 and Torino 2006. In Utah, coming 25th, he was the highest placed slider from a nation without a luge track. At Vancouver 2010 he was Luge Competition Manager for the Organizing Committee, and at PyeongChang 2018 he coached the South Korean National Team. The cancellation of the 1940 Winter Olympics which had been due to be held in Sapporo, Japan, prevented David Bradley (1938) from representing the US in their ski team. The US National Champion in Nordic Combined (cross-country skiing and ski jumping) had come to St John’s and competed for the University during the 1938-39 season (and was a member of the College Debating Society, arguing against the motion ‘That America is a Bad Thing’
and entertaining the house on the theme ‘Trout jump better in America’!). The Games were cancelled because of the war in Europe, but he did have later involvement, not as a competitor but as manager of the US Nordic Ski Team at Squaw Valley 1960, and as Chief of First Aid for all jumping events at Lake Placid 1980. We are always delighted to update our records with the achievements of members of the College, sporting or otherwise. If any current students, Fellows or affiliates wish to ensure the College records their activities please let the Biographical Office know so that we can add the details to the rich collection of material we hold on Johnian achievement throughout the centuries. Fiona Colbert, Biographical Librarian
‘Changes great and small in the life of the College’ A dip in to past volumes of The Eagle is always fascinating. The volume from Easter 1982 consulted in preparation for the article on the admission of women in last term's Newsletter provides the above phrase. It presents co-education as ‘one change that is among the most profound in our history’. It then refers to ‘another that, if less portentous, will nevertheless affect the daily lives of all resident members’, this being ‘enforced economy’ and ‘streamlining’ of the provision of housekeeping and catering. At a time when the excellence of our College Choir is highlighted with the move to blend the best male and female voices from 2022, it is interesting to note 40 years ago the inclusive nature of the College Musical Society was reported, with a broad range of musical ability, open to all who enjoy performing: ‘the Musical Society exists for the benefit of any member of College who wishes to make use of it, whether or not he is a brilliant musician.’ This is still true of SJCMS today (although the pronoun ‘he’ may be altered). The full run of The Eagle from 1859 to the current volume, which was published last term, can be read online at https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/eagle-scanning-project. Fiona Colbert, Biographical Librarian
Women and their books The exhibition in the Library this term marks the start of a year of celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the admission of women. For much of its existence, St John’s has been a very male domain. Although the majority of our early manuscript collections are by and for a male authorship, they include a very popular medieval text by a successful female author: the Epistle of Othea by Christine de Pisan, and a devotional work owned and copied by a local nun called Elizabeth Trotter, a very rare example of a book produced by a female scribe. The printed collections in the Old Library understandably reflect the fact that only a small number of
women in the early modern period were sufficiently well-educated to be able to write books on the subjects studied at University and found in a College Library. Few, but not none. Examples of works given by, written by, or funded by women can be found. The most obvious, of course, is our Foundress. Lady Margaret Beaufort was not just a founder of Colleges; she was a patroness of the cutting edge technology of the printing press: quite possibly the most significant invention of the millennium. Not only did she support several early English printers, she herself translated a popular devotional work for publication. The books written by educated,
intelligent women tell the story of their authors’ fight for recognition in a male-dominated world. Not all women put their names to their books, perhaps to avoid the public censure that this might incur, perhaps with a rueful realisation that their works were more likely to be read and taken seriously if assumed to be written by a man. Margaret Cavendish’s status as the Duchess of Newcastle did not protect her from the sort of personal abuse that might now be found on Twitter, much of it directed at her appearance and character. Aphra Behn’s plays came under fire for a level of ‘bawdiness’ unacceptable from a women, albeit generally unremarkable in the theatre of the time. Some works were published completely anonymously; others admitted only that they were ‘by a lady’. Susannah Newcome’s theological writings met with unusual approval from the Fellowship of St John’s, but she did enjoy a unique status within the College as the Master’s wife. Elizabeth Cary is forthright in her defence of women: “Beleeve me reader, they are much deluded, who think that learning’s not for ladies fitt”, asserting that husbands should prize wisdom in their wives. Anne Finch sums up the situation in forthright verse. If you’d like to know more of how women’s books have featured in St John’s over the last 500+ years, do take a look at the exhibition. The exhibition runs throughout the Lent Term and Easter Vacation in the Library Exhibition Area, Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm (closed bank holidays). An online version of the display can be viewed on the College website at https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/women-and-their-books Kathryn McKee, Special Collections Librarian
Meet the Medieval Manuscripts Cataloguer Hello, my name is Sarah and I’m the Medieval Manuscripts Cataloguer here in the College Library. As I am sure everyone who reads the Library Newsletter will already know, in addition to the fabulous Working Library, the College has the Old Library which houses the enigmatically titled “Special Collections” materials through a door just off the exhibition space. Among the thousands of early printed books, personal papers, and assorted chests, the College also has approximately 280 western European medieval manuscripts, and I
have the ‘it-still-doesn’t-feel-real job’ of working my way through all of them until the end of the Easter Term in order to update our records about these incredible items. The writer M. R. James will perhaps be familiar to readers for his ghost stories, but James was (and remains) a celebrated medievalist for his work on bestiaries and biblical apocrypha, and for his substantial efforts cataloguing the western medieval manuscripts of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Peterhouse, Corpus Christi, Gonville and Caius, Jesus, Pembroke, Emmanuel, Trinity, Clare, Trinity Hall, Magdalene, King’s, Queen’s, St Catherine’s, Christ’s, Sidney Sussex, and of course, St John’s College. Our volume of his cataloguing series was printed in 1913 and it remains the standard reference work for anyone wanting to find out more about our western medieval manuscript collections - the Library has a few printed copies, and the full text is on the Special Collections website under each manuscript page. The St John’s College western medieval manuscript collection is eclectic and every day brings a new cataloguing adventure, but
For comments on this Issue, and contributions to future Issues, please contact Janet Chow. Email: jc614@cam.ac.uk; Tel: (3)38662
in all cases, I write a full description of the binding, check (and usually fix!) the collation formula, and note down provenance details or interesting manuscript features so that later scholars will have a starting point for their work on our collections. Some of my favourite things I’ve seen so far are the delicate strawberries in Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Book of Hours (MS N.24), a squirrel stamp used in a 15th century decorative binding (MS N.18), and the vibrant colours of a 12th century diagram of the movements of the planets through the zodiacal divisions of the night sky (MS I.15, f. 144r). I can’t wait to see what I’ll catalogue next! Sarah Gilbert, Medieval Manuscripts Cataloguer A decorative stamp of a squirrel in profile facing left
A wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca) in the decorative border of a Book of Hours owned by Lady Margaret Beaufort
No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu In the church of St Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco, there is an unusual painting high up around the interior walls. It is of 100 saints and ‘friend’s of God’s justice’, and they are all dancing together, in tune with heaven and each other, as they look out at us. They are not all Christian by any means. Some are surprising. You’ll find Dante and Anne Frank, Malcolm X and William Byrd, Ella Fitzgerald and Mary Magdalene. When I visited the church in 2015, I noted that all of them had halos except one – Desmond Mpilo Tutu (pictured). This is because he was the only one painted on the wall who was still alive. He’d already joined the party. It seems you couldn’t keep him away. Sadly, Tutu died just after Christmas. I only met him once but I have been inspired by him throughout my life. So I decided to revisit this small book he wrote following his experience of chairing South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996. It is personal, accessible and, at times, painfully poignant. We learn about the outrages of apartheid, life in District Six, the suffering endured by so many, but also of the courageous belief, that inspirited change, that if human beings don’t stand for something in this life they will probably fall for anything. Tutu and his colleagues stood for human dignity, and this memoir is a good reminder of how what appears heroic from a distance, is often messy, slow and full of disappointments, close up.
Tutu was of the mind that the cycle of reprisal and counter-reprisal that characterises so many national histories has to be broken by pursuing restorative, rather than retributive, justice. There is no future, he argued, without the rupture of forgiveness that begins this fresh pathway: ‘forgiving means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss which liberates the victim’. This is a challenging idea at a time when we can be tempted to cling to our wounds in the belief that they are a vital part of who we are and, perhaps more importantly, those wounds define my enemy too. Tutu challenges us to ask whether forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world. If you find that thought too simple or sentimental, or a denial of justice itself, then the emotional bravery of many in this book will still command respect. Tutu often quoted the Xhosa saying that "a person is a person through other persons" and he sought to uphold the dignity of all marginalised minorities. ‘If I go up to heaven and find a homophobic God’, he said, ‘I will tell him I prefer the other place’. In later life he championed the protection of the environment and many other justice issues. Reading this book again confirmed the impression of Nelson Mandela that Tutu was ‘sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour. His voice will always be the voice of the voiceless’. At the end he lay in the cheapest coffin available and was aquamated. He had done his work, and this recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize wanted a simple departure. His ashes lie near the pulpit from which, at risk to his life, he challenged racial injustice day in and day out. I hope he has now joined the dance and, on my next visit to San Francisco, I expect the halo to have been painted in. The Rev’d Dr Mark Oakley, Dean