No . 135 The Trusty Servant
When it comes to a critique of specific topics , the exasperated tone sometimes returns :
‘ Explain why the invaders were so much more successful against the England of Ethelred than against the Wessex of Alfred and Edward .
Most of your solutions touched rock bottom somewhere : that is , they said that Ethelred was a ‘ weak ’ king , Alfred and Edward ‘ strong ’ ones . You will all do well to eliminate those ludicrous expressions from your essays …..
… but if you ’ re going to use ‘ weak ’ as meaning every defect of personality from halfwittedness through indecision to congenital drunkenness , you ’ d better pack up and do some other subject .’
Perhaps not a style that would be encouraged in the 2020s , but effective nonetheless and probably recognisable to generations of OW readers . A previous Vox Senum correspondent , Alec Russell ( K , 80- 84 ) and now Editor of FT Weekend wrote : ‘ MSS was one of the greats . His
counsel on writing - and sometimes deservedly withering disdain for my efforts - have stayed with me for over three decades and greatly influenced my career .’
Humby & Goddard Remembered Stuart Anstis ( Coll , 47-52 ), Emeritus Professor at the University of California , writes : I am glad that those long-departed dons Humby & Goddard still have their memorial posts standing in Michlā Passage . I was never up to Freddie Goddard . He was famous throughout the school for his affliction , probably a prostate issue , that obliged him to make frequent and hurried exits from his class to pay a brief bathroom visit . This occasioned great mirth in his unfeeling and ignorant audience . But by all accounts he was a fine teacher . I was up to S . R . Humby for a while . He had the unenviable job of teaching science to us tadpoles who swam around on the B ladder . Most of us looked down on science as an occupation unfit for gentlemen ; what little snobs we were . Humby knew his audience . He never wrote an equation on the blackboard , ever . Instead he had assembled a dazzling array of scientific demonstrations . I remember his bimetallic strip , two sword blades of different metals that were riveted tightly together . These metals expanded at different rates when heated , so when Humby brandished his sword in the flame of a Bunsen burner it bent into a satisfying curve , straightening up again when the metals cooled . He showed us a temperature compensated clock pendulum made from rods of these same metals cunningly fitted together so that when the temperature rose one set of rods expanded upwards as the other set expanded downwards , so the length of the pendulum remained precisely the same . He showed us the power of sound waves with a little toy dog hidden in a kennel . When he shouted “ Rex !” ( the dog ’ s name ) the sound waves triggered a hidden spring that shot the little dog out of its kennel . To introduce us to wave mechanics he never mentioned the Stefan-Boltzman equations . Instead he showed us a shallow glass tray filled with water , in which he dabbled his fingers to make waves travel across the surface of the water . Slow dabbles gave long wavelengths , fast dabbles gave shorter wavelengths , but we could see for ourselves that all waves travelled at the same speed . A lamp underneath cast huge shadows of the waves on to the ceiling . Simple stuff , yes , but magical in Humby ’ s hands . And his evident enthusiasm and delight inspired me with a love for science that has never left me . I have managed to have a long if modest career in visual science when the only scientific instruction I ever received was those long-ago lectures from Humby , seventy years ago . So
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