SO DEFT A BUILDER An Account of the Life and Work of Sir Henry Hadow by JENNIFER R. SIMMONS A thesis submitted to the University of Sheffield for the Degree of Ph. D. September 1978 CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 2 26 CHAPTER 3 66 CHAPTER 4 87 CHAPTER 5 113 CHAPTER 6 130 CHAPTER 7 157 CHAPTER 8 181 CHAPTER 9 213 CHAPTER 10 227 CHAPTER 11 251 CHAPTER 12 283 CONCLUSION 308 BIBLIOGRAPHY 316 APPENDICES PREFATORY VOTES I have endeavoured to acknowledge all my debts in the notes, but I would like to make special mention here of the assistance and encouragement of my supervisors at Sheffield University: Professor W. H. G. Armytage, Professor Edward Garden and, in particular, Dr. E. D. Mackerness. Unless other sources are indicated in the notes, all correspondence referred to will be found at Worcester College, Oxford. Unspecified correspondence is to Hadow's mother, Mary Lang Hadow. Many of these letters are undated. Some account of those of Harlow's personal friends most frequently referred to in the text will be found in Appendix II. Abbreviations: M. L. H. Mary Lang Hadow P. R. O. Public Record Office, London V. C. Vice-Chancellor's Letter Books, Sheffield University SUMMARY From the 1890's until his death in 1937 Sir Henry Hadow exercised a considerable influence on English musical and educational policy. His qualities of scholarship and artistic perception combined with a gift of administrative skill in a life which fulfilled itself in three main sequences. The early chapters of this study offer some account of Hadow's education at Malvern and oxford against the background of his home and family life. His training as a classical scholar was realized, and a summer spent in Germany enriched his interest in musical composition. With the publication of Studies in Modern Music in 1892 and 1895, and his subsequent editorship of the Oxford History of Music, he established a distinguished reputation as a music critic. A new phase in Hadow's life began with his appointment as Principal of Armstrong College - later the University of Newcastle - which was primarily a scientific and technological institution. He was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Durham and a member of five national committees. In January 1919, Hadow was knighted, and in this same year he undertook work as a pioneer in the Army Education scheme. The later chapters, which incorporate Hadowts term of office as Chair- man of the Consultative Committee to the Board of Education, also embrace his service to Sheffield as Vice-Chancellor of the University. It was during this final phase that the many "Hadow Reports", including the six reports of the Consultative Committee and the report for the B. B. C., "New Ventures in Broadcasting" (1928) were published. Hadow continued, as at Oxford and Newcastle, to address a variety of audiences on a variety of subjects; and the lectures and writings of this period are as felicitous in style and expression as they are rich in scholarship. -1- INTRODUCTION "Character which does not translate itself into exploit is for the biographer a mere phantasm. " Sir Sidney Lee, Principles of Biography, Cambridge, 1911. For all his diversity of achievement, Sir Henry Hadow was far from being the man of action so attractive to biographers. He was not without ambition, but there was no dominant design of personal interest to throw into relief the multifarious details of his life. One gets the impression that, rather than moving from one position to another with a clear goal in view, Hadow developed a happy knack of allowing events to sketch the course he was to follow. Indeed, he remarked to his mother: "I have always found 1 in my own life that when an offer comes unsought it was meant to be accepted". It was the concept of service, rather than that of success, which motivated him. If not a man of action in the accepted sense, he was certainly a man of intense activity. Those who remember him recall above all the over- whelming enthusiasm with which he pursued his duties and his interests, and the extraordinary degree of energy with which he was endowed. The letters reveal a keen yet sympathetic perception of his fellow men, and a fascination for dialect and vernacular speech: the accounts of colloquies overhead in the train, at a hotel bar or outside a meeting-hall are especially entertaining. He himself was able to enter into conversation on virtually any subject, be it acrostics, cabbages or small beer. His sense of time was almost equally remarkable, as Sir Adrian Boult records: "Sir Henry Hadow could talk extempore for exactly an hour on many subjects. He would stop 2 and then the clock would strike". -2- Harlow's gift of racy, eloquent speech, supple enough to meet the occasion of festive banquet and academy lecture alike, made him a popular spokesman at almost any social gathering. However, since Harlow rarely used notes, there are few surviving examples of his versatility of social 'attack'. The personal records left by Hadow were of the scantiest: the papers which were available after his death at the residence of the Troutbeck family3 (13, Belgrave Road, London) were not saved, and the documents which are extant are dispersed in the files of the various organizations in which he served. Hadows neice, Miss Enid Mary Hadow, has commented on the meticulous tidiness of both Sir Henry and his sister Grace, and recalls their unawareness of the value which their papers would acquire in years to come. A letter of 25th April, 1920, bears this out: I've been going through cupboards and boxes lately and find that I have a prodigious number of autograph letters from interesting people - many of them on interesting subjects. They're all anyhow and would take a long time to arrange. What shall I do with them? They're no harm at present, but they'll bee, great nuisance to my executors. I've given away a lot but many of them are still private It is not known what became of these letters. Unfortunately, too, there is little opportunity to learn from the tone of address which others adopted toward Hadow. At Sheffield University for example, only copies of the outgoing correspondence from the Vice- Chancellor are preserved; and even the many letters written to Hadow by members of his family and his closest friends have been lost. So the indications as to the character and personality of this extraordinary man have to be gleaned or inferred chiefly from his lectures and essays, the surviving letters to his family and friends (now at Worcester College), and the tributes paid to him after his death. -3- In attempting to portray something of what the man at the centre of this study was like, I have found it necessary to include not only as much of the fabric of his scholarship and critical discourse as could suitably be presented, but some of the loose strands of gossip and small talk contained in the private letters. These alone can afford us some glimpse into the diverse and often trivial concerns of the daily round which constituted, no less than Milton, Brahms and the Greek dramatists, the stuff of his life, and can, I believe, be included without risk of wrong impression. Harlow had his share of vanity, but no more than would be expected of a man of such extraordinary energy; and always there abides the presence of the exacting master of scholarship, of the mind which could produce that rare phenomenon: a beautifully written and moving documentary report. Of the significance of Hadowts achievements as a scholar, musician and administrator, there can be no doubt; and happily he was rewarded during his lifetime with a knighthood (1918), the C. E. E. (1920), and nine honorary degrees: Doctor of Music: Oxford 1909 Durham 1910 Wales 1921 Doctor of Laws: St. Andrews 1923 Liverpool 1925 Birmingham 1930 Doctor of Letters: Bristol 1925 Leeds 1930 Sheffield 1930 Most remarkable, however, was the manner in which Hadow encompassed his achievements, conveying an impression of unflagging but unpretentious and altogether natural industry. The characteristics which strike us today, some forty years after his death, are those which are mirrored in the enduring -4- qualities of his prose: concinnity of mind, flexibility of style, and, above all, sincerity of purpose. SO DEFT A BUILDER An Account of the Life and Work of Sir Henry Hadow "His celerity was unrivalled. I have never known anyone so swift at seizing points, so skilled at welding them into the main line of argument, so deft a builder. " (Lynda Grier, letter to H. C. Dent, 16/10/59) -5- NOTES to Introduction 1. Letter to Mary Lang Hadow. 2. Letter from Sir Adrian Boult's Secretary, 22/10/74 (private). 3. Harlow married Edith Troutbeck, second daughter of John Troutbeck, (1832-1899), Precentor of Westminster Abbey, on 2nd April 1930. -6- CHAPTER I FAMILY MATRIX AND SCHOOL YEARS "... it becometh you to retain a Glorious sence of the world" Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation, III 92. I In 1825 the Rev. William Thomas Harlow, Vicar of Elstree, Hertforshire, married Eleanor Anne Drinkwater of Salford. The Hadow family had a strong historical connection with the Church, dating back to Principal James Hadow (1667-1747) of St. Andrews University, who was Professor of Divinity from 2 1699; William Thomas Harlow's father was himself a clergyman. The forbears of Eleanor Anne Drinkwater were, however, soldiers and sailors. One of her brothers, who took the name of Bethune, was an Admiral, and another 3 was the Colonel who commanded a regiment at Gibralter.