[From the Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. Ill]

Henry Francis Pelham
1846-1907

HENRY FRANCIS PELHAM
1846—1907
Henry Francis Pelham sprang from a family which has been often
and honourably represented in English public life during several cen
turies. His grandfather — to go no further back — was the second Earl
of Chichester, colleague of Pitt and Addington. His father was Bishop
of Norwich from 1857 to 1893, and a bishop whose practical adminis
trative powers were reckoned high. He himself was born in 1846 at
Bergh Apton, in Norfolk, then his father's parish, and was sent in
1860 to Harrow, to pass his school years under the headmastership of
Butler, now Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the house
of Westcott, afterwards Bishop of Durham. As a schoolboy, he was
both like and unlike his later self. His intellectual ability was
already apparent : he moved up the school with great rapidity, and
if his work was rated by his teachers as sound rather than brilliant,
their judgement was no doubt due to his preference, even as a boy, for
history and literature rather than for the more fashionable composi
tion and grammar. But he was also noted as quiet and reserved, less
vivacious than the ordinary boy, and seeming somewhat delicate in
health. The man appeared more fully when he came up to Trinity College,
Oxford, in 1865, as an Open Classical Scholar. At Trinity he took
the lead alike in intellectual and in social life : he was prominent in
the Schools, in the Claret Club, in athletics — and was in particular,
like many men of his generation, a fine walker. At the end of his
undergraduate career he won an open Fellowship at Exeter College,
and began work there as Tutor and teacher of ancient history. Al
though he married within four years, in 1873, and thereafter ceased
to reside in college, the senior common-room at Exeter set its mark
upon him. It was indeed a splendid company of scholars that he met
there. Bywater, Boase, Tozer, Ramsay, Ray Lankester, Sanday, were
all, at one time or another, his colleagues, and with Bywater his
in a a

2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
connexion was especially close. Here he learnt the meaning of
'scholarship7 in its full sense, and the true standard at which the
* scholar ' must aim. Here he came in touch with the activities and
advances of contemporary students abroad. Here, thirdly, he was
helped to a full understanding of the objects and ideals proper to
a University as a home of knowledge and scientific inquiry.
Under these influences he began shortly to take rank as an inde
pendent student and teacher. He published occasional articles on
Roman History : in particular, he contributed to the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, in 1886, a long monograph on that subject, which was at
once recognized as a masterly and original work. He lectured regu
larly on ancient history in Exeter College Hall, and soon attracted large
audiences from all over the University. He was, indeed, one of the
first of those inter-collegiate lecturers whose hearers are so many, and
whose discourses are so authoritative, that they rank in all but official
title with the University Professors. Naturally enough, as soon as an
opportunity occurred, he was appointed University Reader in Ancient
History (1887) ; and when Canon Rawlinson, in 1889, closed an un
distinguished tenure of the Camden Professorship of Ancient History,
Pelham was at once and with general approval elected to the vacant
Chair. This post he held till his death on February 12, 1907.
His professional activities were many — writing, teaching, organiz
ing. His writing perhaps was the least important of the three. He
possessed, I do not doubt, the capacity for original research, and such
research as he attempted reached a high level of success. Besides his
Outlines of Roman History, expanded from the Encyclopaedia mono
graph above mentioned, he issued many valuable papers on Roman
history. About 1887 he commenced a large and detailed History
of the Roman Empire, and actually wrote two or three chapters
dealing with the earlier years of Augustus (34-15 b. a). He left at
his death enough finished work — some of it published, some left in
a printable state — to form an octavo volume of collected papers,
which the Clarendon Press will shortly issue. Most of this volume
was written before 1890, but it possesses, I think, a real value for
students of Roman history, and it justifies the opinion that Pelham
both could do and did fine original work.
But two very different causes limited his productiveness. About
1890 a cataract began to cloud his eyes, and though an operation
subsequently restored most of his eyesight, serious and intricate book-
work had to be laid aside. Above all, the exceptionally difficult
task of describing the Roman Empire in full and in detail had prac
tically to be abandoned. Pelham never indeed gave up the hope

HENRY FRANCIS PELHAM, 1846-1907 3
that each year would see him continuing it, and he even spoke
occasionally of the approach of proof sheets, but it was the language
of persistent hope alone, and he does not appear to have actually
worked at the project after about 1890, Cataract was not, however,
the only cause which limited his research. If I judge him aright, he
was not so much a discoverer of new facts as an organizer and
administrator. That is apparent even in his written work, which — how
ever high its value as original research — is even more valuable as an
organized presentment of facts new and old alike. It is a natural
consequence that we shall expect to find him doing singularly able
work as a teacher and as an organizer.
As a teacher, he held for many years an almost unique position,
drawing as Professor even larger audiences than he had attracted to
Exeter College Hall as Tutor. He was, indeed, an admirable lecturer
to University students. He united an excellent, if severe, style,
a diction both simple and apt, a direct, logical arrangement, and a
selection of material suited to his hearers. Neither the colloquial
nor the sentimental nor the rhetorical found place here : these lectures
commanded attention by an imperious, passionless logic which in its
own way was genius. Men did not always find them interesting.
But they listened none the less, and if they utilized the element of
dictation which was present in these, as in most, University lectures,
to take his sentences down verbally and repeat them, more correctly than
wisely, in the examination room, that is a very small part of the results
of Pelham's teaching.
It was a great service to Roman studies in England that Pelham
was so fine a teacher. For the time was critical. When he was
undergraduate and Tutor, Roman history was being revolutionized by
Mommsen. It was Pelham, though not Pelham alone, who recog
nized the force and value of the * new learning' and introduced it into
Oxford. We owe to him and to one or two of his colleagues, notably
to the present Master (then Tutor) of Balliol and to Mr. Warde
Fowler, the diffusion of this better understanding and this more
accurate and intelligent study of Roman history throughout this
country. Nor is that a mere service to Roman studies. The history
of Rome is of peculiar interest to the citizens of the British Empire,
and they who would realize the meaning and conditions of imperial
rule will find no more fruitful comparisons and contrasts than those
which can be drawn between Rome and England.
Pelham did not only teach. He also endeavoured to develop and
organize. He widened Roman History, at least in Oxford, by intro
ducing Geography and Archaeology. He helped to found the Oxford

4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
School of Geography ; he helped to expand the archaeological museum
which had existed in Oxford, in-tme form or another, almost as long
as the Camden Professorship itself. He organized, by promoting or
assisting, reforms which opened various Oxford scholarships, hitherto
the prey of chance undergraduate effort, to students seriously engaged
in advanced historical or archaeological studies. He helped, again,
to found the British School at Athens, and he may be called the sole
founder of its successor, the British School at Rome, which through
his efforts was opened in 1901, and has since done much to aid young
English archaeologists, architects, archivists, studying in Rome and
Italy. He felt, I think, that the institution outlives the individual,
and that it was not enough to open his rooms and devote his time
and sympathy to the chance students who came to seek his help.
That help he rendered freely, and many in England remember it
gratefully to-day. It is well to remember also that his outlook went
beyond such casual and accidental services to learning.
The whole picture is that of a man who combined both the capacity
for learned work and the capacity for practical administration and
organization, and whose instinct and preference favoured the exercise
of the latter faculty. This gave Pelham his special value for the
world of his own day. In general, we have to choose between
scholars who are unpractical and practical men who entirely fail to
understand the value or the needs of learning. In Pelham scholar
ship and practical power met. A scholar, he well understood what
was needed to further the advance of knowledge. An administrator,
he knew how to aid that advance and could make others recognize
what he himself saw clearly. It was his peculiar characteristic that
whereas most administrators care for practical affairs, such as political
or municipal life, he cared, and cared effectively, for the administra
tion of learning. Naturally, he was little known abroad. He had
personal friends in Rome, but in France and Germany he enjoyed
less than his due reputation, and to Mommsen and his pupils he was
little more than a name. His work was done for Oxford : there
his name will live.
It follows that such a man was not merely historian : he was not
even primarily a learned man. His practical administrative ability
found exercise in many branches of Oxford life, and indeed outside
Oxford. He served the University on many committees and boards —
he was long a member of the Hebdomadal Council, and though he re
tired from this in 1905, he was still, at the time of his death in 1907,
concerned in the governance of the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean
Museum, the Common University Fund, and the University Parks,

HENRY FRANCIS PELHAM, 1846-1907 5
and was a pro -Vice-Chancellor. In 1897 he accepted the Presidency
of his old College, Trinity, and carried on till his death the many
and diverse duties of the Head of an Oxford College. He also took
part from the first in the development of women's education in Oxford
and in particular grudged no time in the cause of Somerville College,
where for many years he presided over the Council. He was, further,
an active and attentive Governor of his old school, Harrow, and of
one or two other places of education. In all this practical work he
was unfailingly successful. He was a singularly competent member
of University committees, an excellent President of Trinity, an in
valuable adviser to Somerville and to Harrow. But the special and
unusual feature in his success came, I think, from his combination of
learning and practical power, his capacity alike for giving practical
shape to learned counsels and for shaping practical arrangements to
fit the true needs of learning.
It was said by one who regretted the unfinished History of the
Empire that administrative work had absorbed the faculties and the
time that should have been given to history. It is of course a common
experience that the young researcher grows into an old administrator,
passing from theoretical to practical interests. That was not quite
the case with Pelham. The same two causes which I have pointed
out as hindering the continuation of the History were effective in all
branches of his activity. The man was indeed consistent throughout.
Had his eyesight permitted, he would no doubt have done more
research and less administration. But alike in his intellectual and
his practical work he would have remained what he actually was,
an administrator in the region of learning. The central element in
him was a direct and powerful common-sense, vigorous alike in its
manliness and its intellectual force. He was the same in daily
routine, in teaching, in research, in society. In every problem he
chose with unerring judgement the principal factor: he moved
directly on that point : he grouped round it in logical subordination
all pertinent details and set forth an ordered whole in plain, forcible,
unadorned language. His directness showed, now and again, a touch
— intelligible enough — of aristocratic impatience : he was not always
tolerant of opposition ; he sometimes let himself overrate or over
state his own case. But his clear vision showed him in actual work
both what was desirable and what was attainable, and if he was
sometimes intolerant, he was often conciliatory. For to his austere
directness he added qualities more often found in other alliance,
warm and ready sympathy, a genial sense of human life and feeling,
a quick perception of its humorous side, an unselfish readiness to

6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
help and welcome all around him. In the British Academy he
claimed his seat by right of services to learning and it is as a
scholar's that his life finds its place in the Academy's Proceedings.
But it is right in concluding the brief, critical survey of one who
cared nothing for uncritical praise, to say one word of the man
whose humanity inspired both the scholar and the administrator.
F. J. HAVERFIELD.

*»* I shall, I trust, be pardoned if I have included in this notice some phrases
or sentences which I have already used elsewhere.

Oxford
Printed by Horace Hart, at the University Press