Establishing the College, 1883,93
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Chapter Two Establishing the College, 1883,93 URING the discussions on starting a university in Auckland, and indeed Delsewhere in New Zealand, leading politicians, parsons, and newspaper editors cited precedents in Oxford, Cambridge, London, Dublin, and elsewhere, and quoted the opinions of John Stuart Mill, Mark Pattison, and others on higher education. But what could a university college be like in Auckland? In many respects it took a long time to discover any lasting answers. But the College Council and its Professorial Board were not inhibited in making experiments and advancing, or at least sending out scouting parties, in various educational directions. While the College was small it is possible to see its work whole; to see in one glance most of its efforts to find its niche in the colonial cultural ecology of Auckland. On a minute scale, very many of the activities of the large University of a century later were attempted, often without much success. In 1881, although the University College Bill did not receive its third reading, Parliament had voted £1,500 for the College. In March 1882, without waiting for the Bill to pass, the Minister of Education, Thomas Dick, instructed Francis Dillon Bell, the Agent-General in London, to engage the services of a Professor of Classics and English and a Professor of Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at £700 a year each.1 Once the Act was passed he was also asked to find a Professor of Chemistry and Experimental Physics and another professor for Natural Science. Applicants were not sought in Australasia. The Agent-General recounted some of his difficulties over the appointments in letters to Sir John Hall, the Premier in 1879 to 1882. He wrote that there had been 20 ESTABLISHING THE COLLEGE MRS E . T IZ... R O The original teachers were an impressive group: LEFT Frederick Douglas Brown, the chemist; RIGHT Thomas George Tucker, first Professor of Classics No end of attempts at 'influencing' in favour of particular candidates, but l hope we shall make a good choice of men all the same. The inferior applicants ask awkward questions, but even the best are puzzled by the terms 'Natural Science', 'Biology', and 'Mathematical physics'; and I chuckle when I think what the Education Department would do if it had to make a shot at defining its own terms. And, a month later, in November 1882, he added, These 4 Auckland Chairs of yours have given me fits in every way. A motley crowd of people have been wanting to be taken on for rhe sake of their big brother, or (more often) of their sisters, and their cousins, and their aunts. The Lord do so unto me more also if I ever under takes such a job no more. But I think you will allow I made a stroke in getting, Huxley, Frankland, and Geikie, to say nothing of Crum Brown for the choosing of the 2 new chairs. 2 Some of the most distinguished scholars and scientists in Great Britain had agreed to scrutinize the applications and select the professors. The applications in classics were reviewed by the famous Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, and three other classicists. Professor T a it of Edinburgh and Dr Jellett, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, scrutinized the applications for the mathematics chair. Professor Frankland of the Royal School of Mines and Professor Crum Brown of Edinburgh did the same for chemistry, while Professor Huxley and Professor Geikie, Director General of the Geological Survey, took charge of the natural science appointment.3 The new College could scarcely have been better advised. 21 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND The original reaching staff, and their immediate successors, were an impressive group both intellectually and in their academic training. The chemist, Frederick D. Brown, had studied both in France, where he obtained a B.Sc., and at Leipzig, and had graduated B.Sc. in the University of London. He had excellent research experience both in Germany and at the Royal College of Chemistry. He also studied Geology in Germany and at the Royal School of Mines. In 1881 he was demonstrator in Chemistry in the University Museum at Oxford. The University gave him the rare degree of M. A. honoris causa. He had also lectured in physics at Bedford College. He had published thirteen papers in the leading English and German chemistry journals. His papers on fractional distillation were described by the Oxford Professor of Chemistry as the most important contributions to the subject. Algernon Phillips Thomas, the biologist, was an Oxford graduate from Balliol College with second-class honours in mathematics in his 'moderations' (the preliminary examinations) and first-class honours in the final honours School of Natural Sciences. He, too, had studied in Germany. In 1879 he held an Oxford scholarship to study geology. He was Demonstrator in Biology in the University Museum of Oxford. He had carried out research for the Royal Agricultural Society into the life history of the liver fluke which had wiped out about a tenth of the sheep in Britain in 1879 and again in 1880. He solved this problem and published papers both in Nature and in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society. Two further reports were published in 1883. Almost simultaneously a German scientist had discovered the life cycle of the fluke, and there was some dispute about who deserved the credit.4 Thomas was twenty-six. The emphasis on research which lay at the foundation of the college was not to be revived for many years. The classicist was a brilliant young scholar of twenty-four who was a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, Thomas George Tucker. Against sixty competitors he had won the Craven scholarship in 1881. In 1882 when he graduated B.A. he was declared first equal, and in the Classical Tripos he was the Senior Classic-the best of the sixty-five scholars of his year. Of these three applicants their very distinguished referees spoke in the highest terms. The mathematics chair was originally offered to a man named William Steadman Aldis, but he could not come in the near future. so it was then offered to George F. Walker, a Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge. He was twenty-six and had been the second Wrangler-that is, second in his year in mathematics, a very distinguished place.5 Shortly after he arrived in Auckland he went out in a boat with Professor Tucker to go fishing off Shelly Beach, Ponsonby, and was drowned. Tucker was rescued by some boys, narrowly escaping the same fate. The mathematics chair was again offered to Aldis, who now accepted. Francis Dillon Bell had remarked on the youth of these professors and said that distinguished scholars of thirty or forty could not easily be tempted to leave. Aldis was an exception. He was born in 1839, the son of a Baptist minister. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was first Wrangler in 1861, and was the Smith's Prizeman for the year, but because he was a Nonconformist he could not hold a col lege fellowship (until the religious disabilities were abolished in 1871). He spent some time as a private tutor in Oxford and then he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Principal of the Newcastle College of Physical Science, which was part of the University of Durham. When he came to Auckland at the end of 1883 he 22 ESTABLISHING THE COLLEGE The first Registrar, the Rev. Robert Kidd A tiCKI ANO STAR was forty-four, the only early professor who was not relatively young. He had already published several textbooks and 'elementary treatises', some of which had come through several editions, Geometrical Optics (1872), Solid Geometry (1865), and Rigid Dynamics (1882). In 1887 the Clarendon Press published A Text Book on Algebra as one of a series of books. Auckland was very fortunate to secure the services of so impressive a mathematician. The first six members of the Auckland University College Council were gazetted in November 1882 and in February 1883-the Government nominating the graduates' three members for the time being. They were Judge T. B. Gillies, a Methodist minister, Thomas Buddle, Sir Maurice O'Rorke, the Presbyterian minister, David Bruce, Judge Hugh Garden Seth Smith, and the Honourable Colonel Theodore Minet Haultain, a British army officer who fought in the Anglo-Maori wars and was later a cabinet minister. The Auckland parliamentarians elected John Logan Campbell, one of Auckland's founders, W. G. Cowie, the Anglican Bishop of Auckland, and a leading lawyer, Edwin Hesketh. Haultain, Seth-Smith, Hesketh, and Sir Frederick Whitaker, a later Councillor were, with Cowie, the Standing Commission of the Anglican General Synod for the interpretation of the Canons, so the Council was predominantly Anglican.6 The Mayor and the Chairman of the 23 A HISTORY OF TH E UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND Education Board were also members of Council. They represented the core of the Auckland 'establishment', the essence of respectability and standing in society. At their first meeting, in February 1883, O'Rorke was elected Chairman. They adver tised for a Registrar at a salary of £100, and in March appointed the Reverend Robert Kidd. Or Kidd, as he was usually called, had been the first headmaster of Auckland Grammar, but had been dismissed. He was a 'squat figure with a slight lisp, a club foot and (strangely enough in an Irishman) a difficulty in sounding his "r's".'7 Like O'Rorke, he was a graduate of Trinity College, with the degrees of B.A.