Pageant Fever

This week we take a break from lockdown November to look at pageant plays, a popular way of celebrating local and national anniversaries in the early years of the twentieth century.

Featuring scenes from English history associated, however loosely, with a city, town or village, pageant plays took place in the open air, the audiences accommodated in specially built grandstands. Casts could run to thousands and with many others involved in making props and costumes or selling tickets, pageant organisers aimed to involve as wide a range of people as they saw possible, in a joint endeavour to celebrate local identity.

Romsey Pageant’s book of words and music (1907)
Cope ROM 08

The Cope Collection contains a number of examples of pageant plays ranging from the days of “pageant fever” early in the century to lower key mid-century productions. Both Romsey and Winchester staged notable pageants in the Edwardian period. Romsey’s, held at Broadlands in June 1907, marked a thousand years since the founding of its Abbey in 907, the proceeds fittingly going to the Romsey Abbey Restoration Fund. With around 1,200 performers, and many residents recruited to support the performances, it was estimated that a third of the inhabitants were involved. Almost 7,000 people travelled to Romsey to see the play, which featured scenes from the history of the Abbey and the town.

From Romsey Pageant’s book of words and music (1907)
Cope ROM 08

A year later F.R. Benson, who had been the pageant master at Romsey, was engaged to stage an even grander pageant play at Winchester’s Wolvesey Castle, this being characterised as a “national pageant” drawing as it did on Winchester’s significance in national history. The play featured nine episodes, beginning with King Alfred and ending with Charles II. Around 2,250 people were involved in the pageant and on the first day alone, 8,000 spectators arrived, causing a dangerous crush near the ticket office. Proceeds from the performances went to the Cathedral Restoration Fund.

Winchester National Pageant’s book of words and music (1908)
Cope WIN 08

As the central feature of an anniversary celebration, pageant plays were often linked to lectures, sermons and exhibitions, all of which helped to generate funds for the chosen cause. Souvenirs were also produced, including the books of words and music of the plays, Romsey’s selling out by the second day. Winchester’s pageant also saw a souvenir booklet produced after the event which included photographs of the performances.

King Egbert from the Souvenir of the Winchester National Pageant (1908)
Cope WIN 08

Pageants continued to be popular in the inter-war years, with three being staged in Southampton. John Alden’s Choice, a pageant play written by Myra Lovett, was the focus of the town’s celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower in 1920. It took place at West Quay and was unusual in that its scenes were of episodes of American history.

 John Alden’s Choice: a Pageant Play (1920)
Cope SOU 81

A 1929 Pageant of Hampton, intended to raise funds for local churches, featured the history of Southampton but with a more modern treatment, employing humour and in some scenes, music and mime rather than dialogue. With the same director, Charles Thursby and writer, F.E. Stevens, the 1935 Pageant to mark the Silver Jubilee of George V built on this, having a narrator and employing impressionistic dance, but containing no dialogue. In another local first, it was performed under floodlights on the Common.

Grand Floodlight Pageant on the Southampton Common (1935)
Cope SOU 08

As well as the large-scale productions, pageants were also popular with local groups. A pageant play written by the Rev. J.E. Kelsall and performed by members of the Milton Women’s Institute at Chewton Glen in June 1920 featured events in national history connected with the New Forest, such as the killing of William Rufus. So impressed were members of the Brockenhurst W.I., that they obtained permission to stage the pageant themselves a year later, with the addition of some episodes related to Brockenhurst.

New Forest Pageant (1921)
Cope 97.08

With alternative sources of entertainment more widely available after World War II, interest in pageant plays was reduced although the Festival of Britain in 1951 and the Coronation in 1953 provided opportunities for what were often smaller, indoor events. Southampton’s Charter Pageant of 1947, at the Guildhall, formed part of the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of the granting of the town’s charter in 1447. The text of the play, most of which was written by the well-known local historian Elsie Sandell, featured the usual scenes from history, but instead of a cast drawn from the community, the performers were members of the Theatre Guild. The Pageant of Womenhood, also by Elsie Sandell, and also at the Guildhall, was part of the Festival of Britain and used well-known figures such as Jane Austen and Queen Victoria in its historical scenes, but also included a final scene of recent history, celebrating the role of women during World War II.

Pageant of Womanhood (1951)
Cope SOU 08

Pageant plays provide a record of a particular view of English history and tradition at various points in time as well as a snapshot of the communities involved in staging the plays. The Cope Collection is fortunate in having a number of local examples and a wider view of all aspects of pageant plays can be found at the AHRB funded Redress of the Past website which includes a national Pageants Database.

The stories they tell: remembering the 80s

So the 1980s – in fashion big shoulders and power dressing were in and the decade saw the emergence of rap music and hip hop and the rise and fall of the “New Romantics”.  The decade began with the appearance of home computers such as Amstrad and Commodore and ended with the invention of the world wide web.  In the political sphere, the UK had its first female Prime Minister in the shape of Margaret Thatcher.  It was a decade that saw conflict overseas – the Falklands war – and industrial and social unrest nearer to home – with strikes in the coal and steel industries – and protests at the introduction of the Poll Tax.

And what was it like being a student during this time?  A newly arrived collection from Eleanor, a History student during the decade, gives some insight into the time that she spent at Southampton. While Southampton, like all UK Universities, faced cuts in its funding during the decade, the proportion of students attending university rose. This was still the era of maintenance grants for students (increased from £380 to £1,430 in 1980) and free tuition.

For students coming to Southampton in the 1980s there were developments as well as cuts, with new buildings and the expansion of the Library and the establishment of new departments and centres. And the campus gained a new venue with the John Hansard Gallery opening in September 1980, bringing together the Photographic Gallery and the University Art Gallery.

New students were guaranteed a place in halls of residence in their first year at University and this student was placed at Chamberlain Hall. These were the days before the proliferation of mobile phones, which was catered for instead by two payphones in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs in halls. Other facilities were not quite as they are in 2020: students had electric metres in their rooms which took 5 pence pieces.

The hall hosted various social events and entertainments, including music concerts such as this for Omicron and The October Game.

Card for event at Chamberlain Hall, 1985 [MS416/22 A4338]

Amongst the various activities undertaken during Freshers’ week was a bus tour organised by the Transport Society which took in some of the main highlights of the city area. It being the days before fancy computer graphics, as the illustration shows this was a case of producing hand-drawn and then photocopied maps.

Freshers’ bus tour route organised by the Transport Society, 1984 [MS416/22 A4338]

Eleanor was involved with a number of societies, including the History Society, as well as enjoying the arts facilities on campus, attending the theatre and shows at the Hansard Gallery, and the incredibly varied and rich programme of films provided by Union Films. Amongst the Union films shown in 1985 were Jack Nicholson’s Goin’ South, Amadeus, The Killing Fields, Beverley Hills Cop, The Terminator and The Deer Hunter to name but a few.

Details of cocktail party at Chamberlain Hall and membership cards for the History Society and Union Films [MS416/22 A4338]

And Eleanor’s collection contains not only mementoes for her graduation ball, but also for the masked ball organised by the Medical Society in May 1986. The rather varied entertainment at this event featured not only music from two very contrasting sets of musicians – the two tone and ska band Bad Manners (which was fronted by Buster Bloodvessel) and Kenny Ball and his Jazz Band – but also from the impressionist Rory Bremner, then at the very start of his career.

Mask, card and programme for the Medical Society masked ball, May 1986 [MS416/22 A4338]

History in the 1980s was the largest department in the Faculty of Arts, with more than 200 undergraduate students. It was at that time situated on the Highfield campus in a building fairly close to both the Students Union and to the Library.

Students were given an introductory tour of the library soon after their arrival at University, to introduce them both to the stock and how to use the catalogue – at that time either on cards or microfiche – to find a book.

Section of the Library guide, 1980s, on how to find a book [MS416/22 A4338]

The history prospectus from the time speaks of the rich collections, including the Special Collections, in the Library to support history studies and regarded “as one of the principal reasons for coming here”.

History Department prospectus [MS416/22 A4338]

Teaching was conducted via lectures, together with weekly or fortnightly tutorials of groups of around 5 students and seminars of larger groups. There was an introductory first year which concluded with a qualifying examination at the end of this and then more specialisation over the following two years. Courses ranged from the medieval period to the mid-20^th century, including such subjects as the Crusades, the Norman Conquest, the rise and decline of Spain, 1479-1716, Latin America since 1840 or War and civil war in Yugoslavia, 1941-5. Medieval history was apparently the most popular element, according to the alternative student prospectus, owing to its enthusiastic lecturers. Eleanor was to follow a number of the medieval courses, including that on the Crusades.

We hope that you have enjoyed this brief glimpse into aspects of student life in the 1980s. For all alumni out there, we would be delighted to hear of your time as a student at the University.

Papers of Mary Therese De Lautour and the Bournemouth Poetry Society

In the stirring times in which we live, when social spiritual and physical claims are catered for in a profusion of ways, the poetry lover on the one side finds himself or herself very often in entire isolation; while on the other hand the uninitiated stand aloof from an art which conveys to them nothing, but is an unknown and strange language. But poetry, rightly understood, has an appeal for all, for it is an art varied enough to cover all human feelings and aspirations.

Letter from Mary Therese de Latour to the Editor of the Bournemouth Daily Echo, c. 1921 [MS 76 A240/2/3]

This rousing appeal appeared in the Bournemouth local news in early 1921; penned by Mary De Lautour, it was the genesis of the Bournemouth Poetry Society.

Mary Therese De Lautour was born in 1881 at Dunbar in East Lothian, Scotland. She spent her childhood in India where her father, Colonel Edward Joseph de Lautour, was stationed. Her mother was Bertha Grates of Brussels and she had one elder sister, Cate. Mary was a great traveler as well as a gifted sculptor, painter and photographer. She was also musical and could sing and play the violin. She was a deeply religious person and had a strong Christian faith.

Watercolour of a church interiour by Mary De Lautour [MS 76 A240/2/2]

In early 1921, De Lautour placed an announcement in a Bournemouth local newspaper. She reports how the recently established Poetry Society now had flouring branches in London, Brighton, Shrewsbury and Bath, among other places, and that she has been asked for form a Centre for Bournemouth: “If any interested persons would communicate with me I shall be happy to give them all further particulars.”

The inaugural meeting of the Bournemouth branch of the Poetry Society was held on Saturday 4 February 1921 at St James’ Institute.

Invitation to the inaugural meeting of a Bournemouth branch of the Poetry Society [MS 76 A240/2/3]

It was reported in the local paper that over one hundred people were present. Mr Laurence Housman was the first president and Miss Eyres honorary treasurer. Miss de Latour, who had been instrumental in its creation, was appointed honorary secretary and she describes how this role took “a very large part of my time.” [MS 76 A240/1/3]

The Society soon had over 70 members. The meetings, usually attended by around 30-50 people, provided “an interesting stimulus to poetry-study in general [and] affords scope for local poets to read their own compositions.” [Southampton newspaper cutting “Poetry Societies” – MS 76 A240/2/3]

Some people’s idea of a Poetry Society meeting is a drawing-room gathering at which people with long hair, pale complexions, and soulful eyes sit round, trying to suppress their yawns while one of their number reads his or her own verses aloud and everybody else is burning with impatience for the time to come for him to take to the floor. They compare such meetings unfavorably with earlier informal poetry societies consisting of rowdy meetings in taverns at which original verses were recited while libations of wine and sack were poured out in honour of the muses, and occasionally, in order to provide a little generous excitement, a poetical throat was cut.

Southampton newspaper cutting “Poetry Societies” [MS 76 A240/2/3]

The collection includes correspondence of Miss De Lautour with literary figures, including Thomas Hardy, Walter De La Mare and Edith Sitwell, inviting them to speak at Society meetings or to judge poetry competitions.

Letter from Thomas Hardy to De Lautour, 1922 [MS 76 A240/1/1]

The collection also contains newspaper cuttings about the organisation and programmes of events.

• 

Bournemouth Poetry Society programme, 1925-6 [MS 76 A240/2/3]

As well as papers respecting the Society the collection includes De Lautour’s working papers and literary notebooks: albums akin to scrapbooks or commonplace books with a mixture of verse and illustrations, some copied or collected and others, De Latour’s own work. Her love of travelling is also a theme of the collection, evidenced through photographs and diaries.

It is difficult to choose just one of her many hundred pieces to share; this, however, felt appropriate for the time of year:

Winter after Autumn

O Winter, old and cold, e’er you advance

Over your shoulder give a backward glance

For Autumn such a lovely look did throw

Over the fields still green and free from snow.

Shadows softer than summer’s dalliance

Like soft baloons fell beneath Beauty’s glance

I move within a train, and Time moves too

O Winter soften as we come to you!

Verse by De Latour, composed c. 4 Nov 1939 [MS 96 A240/1/5]

The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote “a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry”.  Since then, it has grown into one of Britain’s most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally.  Today it has more than 4000 members worldwide and publishes The Poetry Review. They are currently running events via Skype and Zoom.

The stories they tell: Whittingehame College

Today we are looking at Special Collections’ papers from Whittingehame College (MS319): https://www.southampton.ac.uk/archives/cataloguedatabases/webguidemss319.page

Chemistry class [MS 319 A1082/10 folder 1]

Whittingehame College was a Jewish boarding school for boys founded in 1931 in Hove. The headmaster and founder was Jacob ‘Jake’ Halévy. The school was established along the lines of the English public school system: the aim was that normal teaching, leading to University entrance qualification, would be supplemented by instruction in, and practice of, the Jewish tradition. Halévy himself was described as having an idealistic and socialistic Zionist vision of Jews and Muslim Arabs living and working in harmony. The school soon prospered and in 1935 it moved to its premises on Surrenden Road in Brighton. With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s many Jewish boys were sent to Whittingehame from Germany, Austria and neighbouring countries. The School had to be evacuated to Carmarthenshire during the years 1940-46 due to the Second World War.

Whittinghame College letterhead [MS319 A4129]

Collection MS319 includes a variety of materials on Whittingehame, including photographs of school sporting competitions and dramatic performances as well as correspondence between teachers on the usual concerns of student behaviour, wellbeing and discipline. This is shown in the following letter dated 1 July 1935 addressed to one teacher from another teacher on their holiday break:

“[…] whatever you do don’t give up or get ‘fed up’ but keep going, be strict with the Prefects as it is the only way in which you will be able to get them to do things for you, don’t worry about becoming unpopular as you will not become so ever & you might think you are becoming thus […]”

Diving [MS 319 A1082/10 folder 1]

There is also a series of correspondence dated October 1935 to September 1938 between a teacher at Whittingehame (who was later instrumental in setting up the Whittingehame Old Boys Association or ‘WOBA’) and a former pupil and Prefect who left Britain after completing their studies to work for their father’s manufacturing business in Gablonz in northern Czechoslovakia. These letters, covering the second half of the 1930s, reveal the increasingly perilous state of affairs faced by Jewish people in central Europe at that time.  The former pupil tells us that in the late 1930s Gablonz, in northern Bohemia, was a town of 36,000 inhabitants – 6,000 Czechs, 1,000 Jews and the remainder being German.

The earlier letters are much more positive in tone, such as the following addressed to the teacher at Whittingehame from his former pupil dated 28 October 1935:

“You might perhaps know that today Czecho-slovakia is celebrating her day of birth [The First Republic of Czechoslovakia had been declared from the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 28^th October 1918] and all shops and businesses must be closed. All Jewish communities had gathered yesterday in their respective synagogues to celebrate it as well. Our Synagogue was beautifully decorated and I was quite surprised to find so many patriotic Jews among us.”

From December 1935 references to the Nazis begin to appear in his letters and our former pupil mentions that he listens to English programming from New York shortwave radio stations in order to keep his knowledge of English fresh. By this point trade in the town is not flourishing and the country is ‘awfully poor and the people too’.

In a letter dated 6 July 1936 addressed to our teacher at Whittingehame, there is still a defiantly optimistic tone from our former pupil:

“Czechoslovakia is spending a great deal of money on to armaments and defence throughout the northern and western frontier against any aggressor from those parts of Europe. We do not fear that, because we are allied with Russia which is the best armed and strongest country of the whole world.”

Sadly, by early 1938 this attitude had given way to one of fear and trepidation, as revealed in a letter dated 3 April 1938:

“My parents as all the Jews in Czecho. are afraid of the future., which might bring us, poverty, terrible restriction to daily life, closing down business and even concentration camps, one[?] never knows. Despair among the Jewry in this country is the Key of the present time. No help from the great Democracies, no help from the Almighty, whom in my eyes should never a Jew lose faith in. But tell that a hungry stomach!”

In the last letter we have from this series dated 12 September 1938 we learn that our former pupil has left Czechoslovakia and is in Paris:

“Partly very glad, to see my old friends and acquaintances again, partly sorrowful, because I have to leave my parents in such a critical position.”

The ultimate fate of our correspondent from Czechoslovakia, or their family, is unknown. As the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia (which included our correspondent’s home town of Gablonz) was annexed by Germany in October 1938 the Jewish and Czech community fled the city in the autumn of 1938 and the Synagogue there was subsequently burned down. By March 1939 the German Wehrmacht had occupied much of the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Subsequent to the War during the 1950s and 1960s many students arrived from the Middle East. In 1958 the school expanded to new premises at Handcross, some eighteen miles north of Brighton and in 1964 the entire College transferred to Handcross. It was just a few years later however, in 1967, that Whittingehame College closed for good. The closure was due in part to the conflicts in the Middle East at that time and the disruption that this caused to its flow of students.

Whittingehame Old Boys Association or ‘WOBA’ continued to thrive, under various names, until at least as late as the 1990s and its reunion events attracted former pupils from all around the world, evidently a community of former pupils and staff with a very strong bond to their alma mater.

Whittinghame Old Boys Association Reunion Dinner invitation, 1953 [MS319 A4129]