Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Credits
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Childhood
- Part II Oxford
- Part III The Patent Office
- Part IV Re-entry to the academic life
- Part V Pastures new
- Part VI Who am I?
- Part VII Paradoxical Housman
- Part VIII Cambridge – The glittering prize
- Part IX The Great War 1914–1918
- Part X After the war
- Part XI Last Poems A Requiem for Moses Jackson
- Part XII Last Things
- Part XIII Paris 1932
- Part XIV Academic apotheosis and swansong
- Part XV Last flights to France
- Posthumous publications published by Laurence Housman
- Epilogue
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
Part III - The Patent Office
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Credits
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Childhood
- Part II Oxford
- Part III The Patent Office
- Part IV Re-entry to the academic life
- Part V Pastures new
- Part VI Who am I?
- Part VII Paradoxical Housman
- Part VIII Cambridge – The glittering prize
- Part IX The Great War 1914–1918
- Part X After the war
- Part XI Last Poems A Requiem for Moses Jackson
- Part XII Last Things
- Part XIII Paris 1932
- Part XIV Academic apotheosis and swansong
- Part XV Last flights to France
- Posthumous publications published by Laurence Housman
- Epilogue
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Failure in Greats
When they saw his papers, the examiners – Bywater, Macan, Richards and Bidder – were shocked. Only one of them, Bidder, had actually taught Housman and none of his other college lecturers was an examiner, although they seem to have been informed of Housman's situation before the results were announced. Pollard later recalled that when he went up to Oxford for his viva (oral examination), which customarily takes place between the written examination and the announcement of results, he found his examiners bewildered
finding themselves compelled … to refuse even a pass to a man who had obtained a first in Mods … how it had come to pass that on some of the papers Housman had hardly attempted to offer any answers. What had he been doing? The only explanation I could offer at the time was that I believed he might have occupied himself too much with the text of Propertius, and that remained the only explanation I could offer to myself or to anyone else, until in the emotion caused by his death I realised that for a man who was, if not already a great scholar, at least a great scholar in the making, it was psychologically impossible to make the best of his knowledge on subjects in which he had lost interest.
The fact that the examiners did not wish to viva Housman for a second or third or fourth class degree, shows how awful, empty or insulting his papers must have been. He may have allowed his contempt for some of the questions to shine through or may have deployed his coruscating and sardonic wit in his answers. Canon Nance, a St John's lecturer, said that on the philosophical side ‘his performance had been so ludicrously bad as to show that he had not made any effort, and to give the examiners the impression that he was treating that part of the business with contempt’. Pollard said nothing about Housman's possible distress at his father's stroke, nothing about bad blood between Housman and his tutors, nothing about Moses Jackson and gave no other reason than his preoccupation with Propertius for Housman's neglect of the syllabus. Housman himself later told Andrew Gow that his examiners ‘had no option’.
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- A.E. HousmanHero of the Hidden Life, pp. 36 - 59Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018