No.129
progressed to New College (1, Lit.
Hum.), and then won the English
Essay and Conington Prizes while a
Fellow at Magdalen. After Oxford
he climbed the ranks at the British
Museum, starting as an assistant
in 1889 and becoming its Director
and Principal Librarian by 1909, in
which post he remained until 1931.
His principal academic interest
was in the texts being rediscovered
through papyri discovered in
Egypt. He identified a manuscript
of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens
and had published it within a few
months 1891 and followed this with
first printed editions of several other
Greek authors. The majority of his
publications, however, were on the
The Trusty Servant
text of the Greek New Testament
– an interest which had begun at
Winchester. He edited a series of
Biblical papyri, but also produced
popular books on the story of the
Bible’s text. He sealed the deal which
brought the Codex Sinaiticus to the
British Museum with a telephone
call from the Warden’s Lodgings. In
his spare time he edited the poems
of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. Universities across
the world awarded him honorary
degrees and he was president of
a variety of learned societies and
committees. Walter Oakeshott in his
obituary praised him for ‘a quality of
scholarship such as is encountered in
only one or two men in a generation.’
An imperial quest and other
lepidopterological memories of NHS
John Woolmer (Co Ro, 63-75) remembers:
In September 2019, my friend
Matthew Oates, who often writes
the nature column for The Times,
was ambling beside the Itchen
meditating on poetry in general and
Keats in particular, when he stopped,
as is his wont, to examine a sallow
bush close to Tun Bridge. Unlike
us lesser mortals, he easily found
a pre-hibernation purple emperor
caterpillar. A better find than Keats
managed: ‘then in a wailful choir
the small gnats mourn among the
river sallows’. Matthew’s considered
view is that the emperor is spreading
southwards near the Itchen.
This set me thinking. About 50
years ago, in the company of Euan
McAlpine (Co Ro, 68-81) and Rodney
Richards (D, 72-76), I chased a male
purple emperor down a track near
Farley Mount. Around the same time,
a great friend of Michael Baron (Co
Ro, 56-88), Graham Darrah, a forestry
expert, was advising the ASA on the
management of Crabbe Wood. Under
his direction, clearings were made to
encourage the noble emperor to take
up residence. When I next wander
beside the Itchen in late June, will I
meet an emperor? Perhaps the current
NH Soc could keep a look-out?
Years ago, the Jacker (HA Jackson,
C, 1898-1903; Co Ro, 1908-47 &
50) assured me that he had seen a
swallowtail flying across the Lords
cricket pitch towards the Itchen. If
the Jacker wasn’t such a truthful man,
I would doubt either his veracity or
his eyesight. Swallowtails only breed
on the Norfolk Broads, except for
a few European swallowtails which
migrate to Kent and Sussex and
being more catholic in their tastes do
17
occasionally breed there; they pupate
on reeds which are cut for thatching.
Perhaps the roof of Hunter Tent
had been the recipient of such an
occasional happening. Anyway, the
Jacker pursued it for some distance
before being outrun!
East from Tun bridge lies Gater Field
- full of memories. The goal posts
remind me of the occasion when a
Hopperite(?) was rude to me when I
(with characteristic inefficiency) was
refereeing an unimportant house
match. I sent him off and gave a
penalty. As he was the goalkeeper,
I demanded that the penalty was
shot between the empty posts -
thereby breaking nearly every rule
of refereeing! No-one dissented.
Fortunately, John Gammel (HoDo,
I, 58-68) wasn’t watching. Nearby,
on the eastern edge of the field, near
Fallodon, one summer evening