Notes from Oxford, 1910–1911

By R'D O'Leary

Over the span of forty years, Professor Raphael Dorman OLeary passionately imparted to his students his love of writing and English literature at the University of Kansas. When he died after a short illness in 1936, his personal effects were passed to several relatives until Dennis OLeary, and his wife, Margaret, discovered his papers while restoring a family house. Amid Professor OLearys papers were two slim and battered booklets containing the colorful journal that he kept during his sabbatical in Oxford, England, from 1910 to 1911.
The journal paints a vibrant picture of OLearys academic, social, political, and religious encounters in Oxford, England, as he and his family attempted to adjust to an alien world. Professor OLeary portrays with humor and pathos his myriad encounters with professors, politicians, Rhodes scholars, shopkeepers, nurses, street urchins, and mummers while vividly describing the dreary climate, tea and dinner parties, football games, the marketplace, musty bookstores, Oxfords slums, and the birth of his son in a rooming house bedroom.
Notes from Oxford, 19101911 reveals a fascinating glimpse into the experiences of a revered English professor during his one-year sabbatical in Oxford, England.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491747452

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Copyright © 2015 Edited and Annotated by

Margaret R. O’Leary, MD and Dennis S. O’Leary, MD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4746-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4745-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5271-5 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014917202

iUniverse rev. date: 12/31/2014

CONTENTS

Preface

Brief Biography of Professor O’Leary

Brief Biography Notes

Chapter 1   August–September 1910: An Alien World

Chapter 1 Notes

Chapter 2   October 1910: Lonely Rhodes Scholars

Chapter 2 Notes

Chapter 3   November 1910: A Thanksgiving Chicken

Chapter 3 Notes

Chapter 4   December 1910: A Christmastime Newborn

Chapter 4 Notes

Chapter 5   January 1911: A Wintry Bodleian Library

Chapter 5 Notes

Conclusion

Conclusion Notes

Preface

O ver the span of forty years, Professor Raphael Dorman O’Leary passionately imparted to his students his great love of writing well and of the great works of English literature at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. When he died after a short illness in 1936, his papers and personal effects passed to his wife, Mathilde Augusta Henrichs (1875–1958), and, after her death, to their youngest son, Theodore Morgan O’Leary (1910–2001). Upon Theodore’s death in 2001, Professor O’Leary’s papers passed to Dennis Sophian O’Leary, MD, Theodore’s son and Professor O’Leary’s only surviving grandson. Dennis and his wife, Margaret R. O’Leary, MD, discovered Professor O’Leary’s papers during the restoration of the house in which Theodore and Emily Sophian O’Leary (1913–1995) had lived for six decades (1940–2001) in Fairway, Ka nsas.

Amid Professor O’Leary’s papers were two slim and battered booklets containing the journal that he kept during his sabbatical in Oxford, England, from 1910 to 1911. The two booklets document the period from August 26, 1910, to January 26, 1911. If there were more booklets, they are presumed lost. It seems probable that Professor O’Leary anticipated publishing his journal, because he made corrections and additions to the original text using a different writing instrument, and he occasionally employed a code script to cloak sensitive material.

Initially, the plan was to publish Professor O’Leary’s Oxford University journal in his biography, a separate project that is underway; however, the journal’s length of about thirty-five thousand words and its unity precluded this approach. The only alternative considered by the editors, given the journal’s contribution to the historical record, was to publish Professor O’Leary’s journal in a stand-alone book, which is before you now.

The editors transcribed Professor O’Leary’s journal verbatim (word for word, without adjusting spelling or grammar) with the exception of completing most initialized or abbreviated words (e.g., Sat. has been transcribed as Saturday and cts as cents). The editors have added footnotes and images to enhance Professor O’Leary’s highly referenced text. Professor O’Leary’s code script remains undeciphered, as he would have wanted.

Margaret R. O’Leary, MD

Dennis S. O’Leary, MD

Fairway, Kansas

September 2014

Brief Biography of Professor O’Leary

P rofessor Raphael Dorman O’Leary, known by many as R. D. O’Leary, was born on September 19, 1866, in a farmhouse on a 160-acre farm just east of the lower part of Wolf Creek, near its mouth on the Neosho River, about two miles southeast of Burlington, Coffey County, in eastern Kansas. Professor O’Leary’s mother, Katherine (Kate) Mabel Moser (1846–1921), was born in Pineville, Missouri, and his father, Theodore O’Leary (1833–1878), was born in Clarke Township, Durham County, Upper Canada. Upper Canada was later called Canada West (1841–1867) and then Ontario. Theodore O’Leary attended college for three years—two years (1852–1854) at New York Central College, ¹ McGrawville, Cortland County, New York, and one year at Antioch College ² (1854–1855) under Horace Mann (1796–1859) ³ in Yellow Springs, Greene County, Ohio. He did not graduate because of failed means. ⁴ Theodore O’Leary next taught school in Missouri and Canada West before moving to Kansas to farm with his bride in 1862. Theodore imbued Professor O’Leary with his keenness for language and literature. Theodore had two older brothers (Professor O’Leary’s uncles), who were also born in Upper Canada: Arthur O’Leary, MD (1829–1905), a physician, author, speaker, and entrepreneur, and Jeremiah O’Leary (1823–1864), a Canadian schoolteacher and yeoman who served during the American Civil War with the First Michigan Sharpshooters and died in 1864 as a prisoner of war. ⁵

Professor O’Leary had two younger brothers. Theodore Arthur (1869–1946), known as both A. T. and T. A., was a farmer, letter carrier, journalist, and newspaper editor, and Edgar Paul (1873–1941), known as Paul, was an attorney and land surveyor. On November 15, 1878, Theodore O’Leary suffocated in a cave-in while working out a coal seam with his farmhands and his team of horses. The coal was intended for heating the O’Leary farmhouse on their second farm (owned by Arthur O’Leary, MD) near Waverly, Rock Creek Township, Coffey County, Kansas. Professor O’Leary’s widowed mother, Kate, became owner of the farm near Burlington. She subsequently married Thomas Edward Francis Bryan (1857–1932), with whom she had one daughter who died before her first birthday.

Professor O’Leary received his earliest formal education in Wolf Creek School, a one-room schoolhouse located not far from the O’Leary farmhouse. He then attended the fledgling Burlington High School ni Burlington, Kansas, for one year; the University of Kansas preparatory department for one year (1888–1889) in Lawrence, Kansas; the University of Kansas (1889–1893), from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor of arts degree in modern languages; and the Graduate School of Harvard University, from which he earned a second bachelor of arts degree in 1895. While at Harvard, Professor O’Leary studied under psychologist and philosopher William James, MD (1825–1896)⁶; philosopher Josiah Royce (1855–1916)⁷; and folklorist Francis James Child (1825–1896),⁸ whom Harvard president Charles William Eliot (1834–1926)⁹ had appointed in 1876 as the first professor of English at Harvard. The board of regents of the University of Kansas, by recommendation of Chancellor Francis Huntington Snow (1840–1908),¹⁰ hired O’Leary as an English instructor upon his return to Lawrence from Cambridge, Massachusetts, in June 1895. O’Leary joined two other young professors of English at the University of Kansas: Charles Graham Dunlap (1859–1936)¹¹ and Edwin Mortimer Hopkins (1862–1946).¹² For a half century, these three devoted university professors taught English composition and English literature.

On August 20, 1896, a Unitarian minister¹³ married Professor O’Leary and Mathilde Augusta Henrichs at her father’s house in Humboldt, Allen County, Kansas. Mathilde was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Kansas in 1895, earning her bachelor’s degree in Latin science. Mathilde was the second oldest of five surviving sisters born in the United States to Prussian immigrants Martin Henrichs (1840–1907) and Bertha Henriette Hartwig (1852–1890). Martin was a successful harness and saddle maker. Mathilde’s four sisters were Emilia (Emelia) Wilhelmina (1873–1965), Emma Helena (1878–after 1940), Bertha Edna (1884–1972), and Bessie Anetta (1887–1964). Like Mathilde, most of her sisters graduated from college.

Early in his teaching career, Professor O’Leary taught rhetoric, advanced English composition, and the history of English literature and language. Later in his career, he taught narration and description, the English essay, essay writing, eighteenth-century English literature, eighteenth-century prose, methods of teaching English composition, the history of the literature and teaching of rhetoric in English, and some other courses (e.g., Shakespeare) as needed when their usual instructors were unavailable. R. D. O’Leary served as assistant professor of English (1895–1901), associate professor of rhetoric (1901–1915), professor of English (1915–1936), and chairman of the English department (1921–1923). He was the founding editor of the Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas (1902–1905). Students identified him as among the best teachers at the University of Kansas every decade between 1900 and 1940.¹⁴ Between 1892 and 1915 alone, he published a dozen book reviews and literary articles in various journals.¹⁵–²⁶ In 1928, he published his only book, titled The Essay, which he wrote during his sabbatical year at Oxford in 1910–1911.²⁷

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R. D. O’Leary, circa 1900. O’Leary Family Archives (Fairway, Kansas, 2014).

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Fraser Hall, University of Kansas, where Professor O’Leary taught English for forty years, shown here in 1911.

The board of regents of the University of Kansas granted Professor O’Leary a leave of absence for the year 1910–1911 to study at Oxford University and to travel in Europe. Mathilde; their sons, Dorman Henrichs O’Leary (1897–1968) and Paul Martin O’Leary (1901–1997); and Mathilde’s younger sister Edna Henrichs (1884–1972), who had recently graduated from the University of Kansas, accompanied Professor O’Leary. When the family departed from Lawrence, Kansas, for England on August 26, 1910, Mathilde was about five months pregnant.

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Left to right, R. D. O’Leary, Paul O’Leary, Mathilde Henrichs O’Leary, circa 1906, Humboldt, Kansas. O’Leary Family Archives (Fairway, Kansas, 2014).

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In front, Paul O’Leary and Dorman O’Leary; standing, Mathilde Henrichs O’Leary, circa 1906, Humboldt, Kansas. O’Leary Family Archives (Fairway, Kansas, 2014).

Brief Biography Notes

1. American Baptist minister Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor (1792–1879) of the American Baptist Free Mission Society founded the New York Central College in 1846 as a rebuke to American Baptists who refused to take a stand against slavery. Students received a classical education within the framework of the founders’ five core beliefs: the unity of the human race (no slavery), women’s rights, manual labor, Christianity with the Bible as the textbook in morals to be studied in English and its original languages, and temperance (no alcohol, tea, coffee, or tobacco use). The college struggled financially, went bankrupt, and ceased to exist in 1861. Albert Hazen Wright, Cornell’s Three Precursors: I. New York Central College (Ithaca, NY: New York State College of Agriculture, 1960).

2. The Christians (so-called because of their scruple about bearing any sectarian name) founded Antioch College in 1852 at the General Christian Convention held in Marion, Wayne County, New York. The Christians commanded all true Christians to unite and take no name but Christians, adopt no creed but the Bible and allow each person his or her own judgment in interpreting its teachings, and make the evidence of Christian life and character the only requisite to admission to their fellowship. The Christians recruited educator Horace Mann (1796–1859) as the college’s first president, and he served from 1853 to 1859. Students received a classical education. Articles of Incorporation, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Greene Col., Ohio (Xenia, OH: Patton & Findley, 1875). See also Historical Sketch of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Green County, Ohio (n.p., 1876). See also Robert L. Straker, Brief Sketch of Antioch (1853–1921) (Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch College, 1954).

3. Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972). See also Mary Mann, Life of Horace Mann by His Wife (Boston, MA: Walker, Fuller, and Company, 1865).

4. Arthur O’Leary to Professor O’Leary, August 26, 1894, O’Leary Family Archives, Fairway, Kansas, 2014.

5. The Confederates captured Jeremiah O’Leary at the Battle of Petersburg (June 15–18, 1864) and imprisoned him at Camp Sumter military prison, Andersonville, Georgia. He died there of dysentery on August 9, 1864. Jeremiah O’Leary—Andersonville Prison File, accessed April 27, 2014, http://www.andersonvillepowcamp.com/index.php?page=directory&rec=20873.

6. New York City native William James earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1869 at age twenty-seven but never practiced medicine. Instead, he taught anatomy, physiology, psychology, and philosophy, in that sequence, over his thirty-four-year career at Harvard. History remembers him best as a psychologist and philosopher. Jacques Barzun, A Stroll with William James (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983). See also William James, The Principles of Psychology: The Briefer Course (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1892). See also Louis T. Cacioppo and Louis G. Tassinary, Centenary of William James’s Principles of Psychology: From the Chaos of Mental Life to the Science of Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 16, no. 4 (December 1990), 601.

7. Thirty-three-year-old William James first met twenty-year-old Josiah Royce in 1875, whence they became lifelong friends and colleagues. Royce was born in Grass Valley, a mining town in Northern California. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1875; earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins (his dissertation was Of the Interdependence of the Principles of Knowledge: An Investigation of the Problems of Elementary Epistemology) in 1878; returned to the University of California as an assistant professor of English, as there was no organized field of philosophy; substituted for William James by the latter’s request when the latter took a sabbatical year in 1882–1883; and remained on the Harvard faculty as a philosopher and scholar for the remainder of his career (1882–1916). John Clendenning, The Life and Thought of Josiah Royce (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999). See also Frank M. Oppenheim, Dawn Abert, and John J. Kaag, Comprehensive Index of the Josiah Royce Papers in the Harvard University Archives (2010).

8. Francis James Child, a sailmaker’s son nicknamed Stubby because of his short stature, was elected class orator of his graduating class at Harvard in 1846. After studying Germanic philology at Göttingen and Berlin (1849–1851), he joined the Harvard faculty to teach writing and speaking to undergraduates. On June 20, 1876, the president of the fledgling Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, attempted to lure Child from Harvard to head an English department; at the time, Harvard did not group courses by department. In 1876, Charles William Eliot (1834–1926), Harvard’s president from 1869 to 1909, responded to the outside threat by creating a Harvard English department and appointing Child as Harvard’s first professor of English. In his new position, Child was relieved of correcting undergraduate compositions. Four Generations of Oral Literary Studies at Harvard University, Child’s Legacy Enlarged: Oral Literary Studies at Harvard Since 1856, Milman Parry Collection, accessed May 6, 2014, http://chs119.chs.harvard.edu/mpc/about/bynum.html. See also Biographical Sketch, Child Family Papers, 1833–1916, Cambridge Historical Society, accessed May 8, 2014, http://www.cambridgehistory.org/library/child#histsketch. See also Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 65–66. See also Stephen Hequembourg, The Harvard English Department: A Brief History, accessed May 7, 2014, http://english.fas.harvard.edu/about/department-history/.

9. Boston native Charles William Eliot graduated from Harvard College in 1852. He was elected president of Harvard at age thirty-five and served in that capacity for forty years (1869–1909). Henry James, Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard, 1869–1926 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930).

10. Francis Huntington Snow, a twenty-six-year-old Congregationalist minister from Massachusetts, was recruited in 1866 to the fledgling University of Kansas to teach mathematics and natural science. Snow was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts; attended Williams College (where he earned a baccalaureate degree in 1862), Andover Theological Seminary (from which he graduated in 1866), and Williams College (where he earned a master’s degree in 1866); and later earned a doctorate. Clyde Kenneth Hyder, Snow of Kansas: The Life of Francis Huntington Snow (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1953).

11. Charles Graham Dunlap (1860–1936) was born in Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio, where his father was a dentist. Charles earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1883; joined the faculty of the University of Kansas in 1887; and earned a master’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1889. He reached full professor status in 1890, only three years after joining the faculty. Dunlap taught English at the University of Kansas from 1887 to 1928. Guide to the Charles G. Dunlap Collection, Personal Papers of Charles G. Dunlap, 1887–1928, University of Kansas Libraries, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, accessed Mary 4, 2014, http://etext.ku.edu/view?docId=ksrlead/ksrl.ua.dunlapcharles.xml.

12. Edwin Mortimer Hopkins was born in Kent, Putnam County, New York; taught school at the age of sixteen in a small country school; attended the State Normal School at Albany, New York; entered Princeton University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1888; tutored at Princeton for one year; and accepted a faculty position to teach English at the University of Kansas in 1889. He earned a PhD from Princeton in 1894. Guide to the Edwin M. Hopkins Collection, Personal Papers of Edwin M. Hopkins, 1889–1946, University of Kansas Libraries, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, accessed May 5, 2014, http://etext.ku.edu/view?docId=ksrlead/ksrl.ua.hopkinsedwin.xml. See also Veteran K. U. Faculty Member Dead at 83, Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, June 13, 1946, 8.

13. The Unitarian minister was the Reverend Clark Goodhue Howland (1831–1899). He was born in Barre, Michigan, and entirely self-educated. He was ordained a Universalist minister in 1860 but soon switched to Unitarianism. He served pastorates in Tremont, Illinois, from 1860 to 1865; Kalamazoo, Michigan, from 1865 to 1881; and Lawrence, Kansas, from 1881 to 1898. Howland, Clark Goodhue, 1831–1899, Andover-Harvard Theological Library (Cambridge, MA, 2007), accessed May 10, 2014, http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~div00491~div00491. See also O’Leary—Henrichs, English Professor at Lawrence Takes a Humboldt Bride, Topeka Daily Capital, August 20, 1896, 4.

14. George R. Waggoner, Our Finest College Teachers, Third Annual Report of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 1960).

15. R. D. O’Leary, The ‘Lost Atlantis’ of Plato, Seminary Notes 2, no. 1 (October 1892), 7–11.

16. R. D. O’Leary, History and the Historical Novel, Agora 2, no. 2 (October 1892), 158–164.

17. R. D. O’Leary, A Bad Heritage, Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas 5, no. 7 (April 1907), 213–236.

18. R. D. O’Leary, A Certain Rich Man (book review), Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas 8, no. 2 (November 1909), 74–75.

19. R. D. O’Leary, The Alien, Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas 9, no. 5 (February 1911), 161–168.

20. R. D. O’Leary, Pity the Poor English Teacher, English Journal 1 (January–December, 1912), 552–557.

21. R. D. O’Leary, The Adventures of Young Maverick (book review), Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas 10, 2 (November 1911), 76–77.

22. R. D. O’Leary, The Most Empirical of the Professions, Sewanee Review 21, no. 1 (January 1913), 1–15,

23. R. D. O’Leary, A New Novel by Mrs. Kelly (book review), Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas 12, no. 1 (October 1913), 63–64.

24. R. D. O’Leary, Louis Pasteur, Sewanee Review 22, no. 1 (January 1914), 22–37.

25. R. D. O’Leary, Swift and Whitman as Exponents of Human Nature, International Journal of Ethics 24, no. 2 (January 1914), 183–201.

26. R. D. O’Leary, Culture Sewanee Review 23, no. 1 (January 1915), 1–13.

27. R. D. O’Leary, The Essay (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1928).

Chapter 1

August–September 1910: An Alien World

A ugust 26 (Friday) . Started on European trip. Train was to leave at 2:25, but was nearly one hour late. Took with us following: money, $50 cash; American Express order, $400; Traveler’s cheques, $300; draft on Bank of Scotland for 220 pounds (cost of same, $975.85; cost of orders and cheques, fifty cents a hundred). Railroad tickets – from Lawrence to Montreal, three full fares and one half-fare, $114.05. This includes $5 for two Pullman berths to Chicago, $10 for two to Montreal. Three steamer passages, full fare, and one half-fare from Montreal to Liverpool, full fare, $52.60, half $2 6.25.

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Image of first page of R. D. O’Leary’s journal, 1910. O’Leary Family Archives (Fairway, Kansas, 2014).

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Sketch of route of the R. D. O’Leary family from Lawrence to Liverpool, September 1910. Sketch by M. O’Leary.

August 27. Breakfast with American Restaurant, 90 cents; dinner, Parisian Café, 95 cents; off for Montreal, Grand Trunk¹, 3:02. Beautiful farming country everywhere in Canada², to Montreal. Baggage examined by Canadian custom officers at Port Huron, in night, I suppose. Heard them ask one man to unlock his grip.³ Said nothing to us, and put nothing on our grips.

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Standard passenger train,

Grand Trunk Railway System, circa 1909.

August 28 (Sunday). Breakfast in Toronto, where we stopped hour and a half. Poor. Dinner on dining car, $1.85. Not worth it. Arrived in Montreal six PM. Went to Windsor Hotel.⁴ Room with two beds, second floor, $3.00 a day. Fine hotel, very busy at desk, where the conventional fine-hotel-don’t-care-a-damn-for-you atmosphere prevails.

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Windsor Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, 1906.

August