Monthly Archives: February 2014

The love story of Hector and Andromache…

Valentines Day.  A wonderful time of year when  we can indulge in levels of cynicism and sarcasm simply unacceptable at any other!  However, here in the archives our hardened hearts are often shamefully disarmed by the traces of friendship, romance, and (dare I say it!) love we come across every day within our collections.

Those of you familiar with Greek mythology may know the story of Hector and Andromache – Hector the bold Trojan warrior, and Andromache, his beautiful wife.  For those who do not, the story doesn’t end happily, with Hector killed at the hands of Achilles.  Today’s Valentine’s blog is about another Hector and Andromache – Hector Thomson, the son of Godfrey Thomson, and his rather beautiful wife, the aptly named Andromache.

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Hector as a young boy with Thomson

From the outset, despite their fateful monikers, the pair seemed a rather unlikely match.  Hector, according to one family friend, was socially awkward, quiet, and was most likely to be found with his nose in a book.  Andromache, according to the traces of her in the letters of others, was the sort of house guest welcome at every home, who could bring cheer to even the most despondent of households.

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Sadly we have no photographs of Andromache in the archives. This scan was given to us by a relative.

Hector began his career as an Oxford educated Classicist.  Perhaps surprisingly when compared to the accounts we have regarding his boyhood, he finished his degree with a yearning of adventure, and entered the diplomatic service, working in Baghdad.

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Telegrams from Hector to his family sent during his time in Baghdad

At some point in 1939, he found himself teaching at the English School in Nicosia, Cyprus.  It was here the somewhat socially awkward Hector met the vivacious Andromache!  The pair quickly fell in love – in one letter from his father, Hector is told:

We would dearly love to hear from you, and especially to hear more about Andromache, but I know communication must be precarious.

His parents, of course, had their own love story.

Hector also fell in love with Cyprus – his letters to Thomson from this period discuss both the language and the religion of the Cypriots in great detail.  Details which Thomson with his enquiring mind would have found fascinating.  References to Andromache in the surviving letters are brief, with the Thomson’s sending their love and asking how she is – but we know in later years that the Thomsons, along with many of their friends and acquaintances, would affectionately call her ‘Mackie’.

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Scenes from Hector’s time in Cyprus

After their wedding, they settled in Aberdeen where Hector eventually became senior lecturer in Ancient and Modern Greek at the University of Aberdeen.  Hector’s teaching techniques owed a lot to his Father’s career as a psychologist and professor of education, throughout which Thomson emphasised the need to gain and keep the attention of students and pupils.  This is by no means an uncommon idea now, but one which was new and innovative in Thomson’s time.

His Father’s methods are reflected in the many ways Hector grabbed and maintained the attention of his students, apparently even making yoghurt in one lecture!  He endeavored not only to teach his students Greek, but invited them to share in his love of Greek culture.

Following his retirement, he and Andromache spent their time between the Thomson’s former home in Ravelston Dykes, Edinburgh (left to Hector in their will), and Cyprus.  Hector died on 19th February 2008, aged 91.  According to her relations, Andromache was bereft after his death, and decided to move back to Cyprus permanently.  A few short months later, she too passed away.  Hector and ‘Mackie’ were married for 67 years – they were a true love match.  Now that, dear readers, is better than chocolates, flowers, and stuffed toys clutching hearts!

 

 

 

Gathering Intelligence: A free seminar regarding Thomson’s life and work

Our Wellcome Trust funded project*, ‘Documenting the Understanding of Human Intelligence: cataloguing and preserving the papers of Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson’, is on course to deliver on all its objectives in the next few months. Continuing on from the cataloguing project, we aim to digitise Thomson’s papers, and catalogue related papers through the Moray House and University of Edinburgh collections.  We will also be curating an exhibition regarding Thomson’s life and work in 2016.

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Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson (1881-1955)

To mark this exciting and continuing collaboration between the academic and archival communities, we are holding a free seminar for researchers, students, and archivists at Edinburgh University Library, 16th May 2014.

Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson (1881-1955) was a psychologist, statistician, and educator.  The seminar programme reflects this, and is a varied one exploring Thomson’s work in Psychology (especially cognitive testing), Statistics, Education, and Eugenics, with academic speakers from each field.  Chaired by Professor Dorothy Meill, Vice Principal and Head of the College of Humanities and Social Science, It will also discuss current scientific research facilitated through data sets left from Thomson’s work, as well as the complexities involved in interpreting and cataloguing the collection itself.

Professor Ian Deary’s British Academy Lecture on Thomson

Programme

 Gathering Intelligence: the life and work of Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson

Chaired by Professor Dorothy Meill, Vice Principal and Head of the College of Humanities and Social Science

 9. 15:              Coffee and introduction

10.00:             Martin Lawn, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Education, University of Oxford: ‘’His Great Institution’’: Thomson’s advanced school of education in Edinburgh’

10.30:             Professor Ian Deary, Director, Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology: ‘Use of Thomson’s data today in studies of cognitive ageing and cognitive epidemiology’.

 

11.00:             Tea and coffee

11.30:              Professor Lindsay Paterson, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh: ‘Use of Thomson’s survey work in current research on social mobility and life-long education’

12.00:              Dr Edmund Ramsden, ‘Thomson’s research and opinions on the differential birth rate and eugenics’.

 

12.30:             Lunch (lunch is provided), and viewing of the collection

2.00:               David Bartholomew, Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the London School of Economics: Thomson’s original statistical contributions

2.30:               Emma Anthony, Project Archivist, Godfrey Thomson Project: ‘Interpreting and Cataloguing Thomson’s papers’

3.00:               Panel discussion

4.00:               Moray House tour

4.30:               Finish

The seminar is free, but please note places must be booked through eventbrite.

Wellcome Trust bursaries for accommodation and travel are available.

For further information, contact Emma.Anthony@ed.ac.uk.

*Funded by the Trust’s Research Resources grant scheme under the call ‘Understanding the Human Brain’.  Continuing on from the current cataloguing project, we aim to digitise Thomson’s papers, and catalogue related papers through the Moray House and University of Edinburgh collections.  We will also be curating an exhibition regarding Thomson’s life and work in 2016.

The disgruntlements of old age…

Disgruntlement.  The archives are full of it – though I should stress I am referring to the contents of our records rather than our lovely readers (or indeed my lovely  colleagues)!  This week’s letter is a wonderful example of disgruntlement from the eccentric and brilliant zoologist and classicist, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948).  The youth, he tells us, simply aren’t what they used to be:DSCN0373DSCN0374Thompson wrote the letter to Thomson in 1946 to congratulate him on his Galton Lecture, ‘the Trends of National Intelligence’, which explored the idea that as a nation, our intelligence was in decline.

While he acknowledges that he may well be ‘biased by the disgruntlements of old age’, he assures Thomson:

I still believe that my students are inferior to those of thirty or forty years ago, and to my own companions of 60-70 years ago.  They have less ability, much less diligence, and hardly any of the old enthusiasm and joy and happiness in their work.

And that, according to Thompson, isn’t even the half of it!:

There is something, something very subtle and mysterious, which brings the Golden Ages and the Dark Ages; which gives one, in literature, the Elizabethan, the Queen Anne, and the Victorian periods; and in Art the great and shortlived glories of Greece, Italy, Holland and our English school of Reynolds, Turner, Constable and the rest.  All gone!

Indeed.  And according to Thompson, who finishes on a wonderful note of pessimism, its only going to get worse:

I judge from the young people I have to do with, that we are going to be worse before we are better.

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D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

But despite appearances, Thompson loved teaching – he was a renowned speaker whose lecture halls were packed, and he encouraged his students to exercise their enquiring minds.  Even while he lay on his death bed, Thompson’s students visited and livened up his last days with discussion and debate.  Any disappointment hinted at in his letter to Thomson could be attributed to his own brilliance, which perhaps caused him to expect similar levels of extraordinariness in those he taught.

Thompson’s love of biology was awakened by his Grandfather, who, along with Thompson’s Aunt, brought him up in Edinburgh.  This was due to the death of his Mother and his Father’s appointment as professor of Greek in Queen’s College, Galway.  He was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge – gaining a first, naturally, and was appointed professor of biology in University College Dundee.

The importance of artefacts in teaching was clear to Thompson from the outset.  Under his guidance a rich museum of zoology was created, helped by the Dundee whalers.  Thompson himself was deeply interested in whaling, visiting the Pribylov Islands as a member for the British–American ‘inquiry on the fur seal fishery in the Bering Sea’.  This interest would continue throughout his life, seeing him speaking at international conferences; appointed CB (1898); becoming a member of the fishery board for Scotland; and becoming a British representative for the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. In 1917, Thompson accepted the post of senior chair of natural history in the United College of the University of St Andrews.

Thompson’s published output was vast, and included papers on biology, oceanography, classical scholarship, and natural history.  He had several honours bestowed upon him, including his election as fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1885); his election as fellow of the Royal Society (1916); the Linnean gold medal (1938); the Darwin medal (1946); and his knighthood (1937).  Despite his description of himself as a ‘disgruntled old man’, Thompson encouraged the youth surrounding him to think, to enquire, and to explore – something he did right up until the end of his life.