Fragments of University Reminiscence (1922–1972)

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Notes

1 A reference to the fact that from January 1926, he was appointed to his first academic post as Lecturer in charge of the Department of Spanish at Armstrong College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the University of Durham.

2 A reference to his MA research thesis, on Pérez de Oliva, published as Hernán Pérez de Oliva. A Biographical and Critical Study, Revue Hispanique, LXXI:160 (1927), 309–484.

3 The Modern Humanities Research Association had been founded by E. Allison Peers in 1918. Atkinson acted as its Honorary Secretary between 1929 and 1936; Peers was one of Atkinson’s referees for the Stevenson Chair of Spanish at Glasgow University. His reference forms part of Atkinson’s portfolio of papers (reproduced here) that made up his application, dated 20 February 1932.

4 William C. Atkinson was author of the original entry, c.1945]. See ‘Stevenson, Sir Daniel Macaulay, baronet (1851–1944)’, rev. Irene Maver, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford. U. P., 2004), <https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/36286> (accessed 30 January 2018). For an appreciative, yet truthful memoir on Sir Daniel Stevenson, founder of the Stevenson Chairs of Spanish and Italian at Glasgow University in 1925 and Chancellor of that University (1934–1944), see the tribute given by Sir Hector Hetherington, the then Principal, to ‘Sir Daniel and the University’, dated 13 July 1944 (available, with other obituaries, in Glasgow University’s Archives; see under Sir Hector Hetherington and/or Sir Daniel Stevenson). In his tribute to Sir Daniel, Sir Hector referred to ‘the natural combativeness of his temper’. Another tribute to the ‘Chancellor of Glasgow University Sir Daniel Stevenson Bt’, which appeared (unsigned) in the Glasgow Herald, 12 July 1944, p. 61, says of him: ‘Sir Daniel was a challenging personality’ and ‘provoked many controversies’. It is clear that Atkinson knew Sir Daniel well, was aware that many found him ‘cantankerous’, but liked him a great deal. In the memoir he wrote about Entwistle, the first holder at Glasgow of the Stevenson Chair of Spanish, Atkinson refers to Sir Daniel Stevenson as ‘a princely and enlightened benefactor to his University’. See William C. Atkinson, ‘William J. Entwistle, Modern Humanist (1895–1952)’, Annual Bulletin of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 25 (November, 1953), 15–30 (p. 20) (address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the MHRA, 2 January 1953, London). Entwistle’s appointment to the King Alfonso XIII Professorship of Spanish Studies at Oxford University in 1932 created the vacancy at Glasgow for which Atkinson successfully applied.

5 The description of the Stevenson Chair of Spanish which the University of Glasgow provided to applicants in January 1932, bears out what Atkinson says: namely, that the founder of the Chair was deeply concerned that its holder not only would teach and do research at the University on Spanish language, literature and history, but would also teach and promote the Spanish language for business and commercial purposes at what was then called the Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. It is interesting to note that Atkinson’s salary on appointment was £1,100 per annum; this sum was more than four times the amount of Ivy McClelland’s salary (£250 p.a.) when in 1930 she was appointed an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Spanish at Glasgow (source: Ivy McClelland, during one of many conversations with Ann Mackenzie in which she recalled her early career).

6 The Minister of Education in the Second Republic at this time, was the socialist politician Fernando de los Ríos (1879–1949). His testimonial for Atkinson may be consulted in Glasgow University’s Archives.

7 Atkinson’s first child, and only son, Anthony Cedric.

8 The Professors’ Square or Quadrangle at Glasgow University derived its name from the fact that all the buildings in that square (located to the right on entering the University’s Main Gates in University Avenue), were built for and originally lived in as their homes by the Principal of the University and the University’s twelve ‘ancient’ professors (i.e. the holders of the University’s original chairs). Nowadays, the only building still used for the purpose it was initially designed for is the Principal’s Lodging. Though it was expanded when renovated in 1988, The Lodging is still at No. 12, in what, in our non-hierarchical times, is now usually known as ‘The Square’.

9 The Principal of Glasgow University in 1932, referred to here, was Sir Robert Sangster Rait, Professor of Scottish History and Literature. He had only taken up the post in 1929, and was succeeded in 1936 by Sir Hector Hetherington.

10 For more on Atkinson’s pioneering work in expanding the Department of Spanish into the Department of Hispanic Studies at Glasgow (therefore setting an example which many other professors and heads of departments of Spanish were to follow), see Mackenzie’s Introduction I & II to this volume. See also below, John C. McIntyre, ‘Professor William C. Atkinson (WCA) As Remembered by Some Former Students’.

11 For information on the careers followed by at least some of Atkinson’s graduates in Hispanic Studies, see below, McIntyre, ‘Professor William C. Atkinson (WCA) As Remembered by Some Former Students’.

12 Atkinson refers here to the fact that Honours undergraduates studied two languages during four years of study at the University. The compulsory year abroad he mentions was additional; so that the MA Double Honours Degree in Modern Languages at Glasgow University took, in total, five years to complete.

13 See letter by William C. Atkinson, ‘Students of Russian: Cultural Exchanges Essential’, in ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Times, 17 August 1954, p. 7. See also his ‘On Friendship with Russia’, The Fortnightly (July 1954), 27–33.

14 An allusion to the fact that Glasgow University was founded by papal bull in 1451 (letter of Pope Nicholas V, dated at St Peter’s in Rome on 7 January 1451).

15 An oblique indication that Atkinson was offered chairs by a number of different universities, nationally and internationally, but turned them down. He was shortlisted for the King Alfonso XIII Professorship of Spanish Studies at the University of Oxford in 1952 (left vacant by the death of Professor William J. Entwistle), a post he presumably would have accepted; but the successful applicant, appointed from 1 October 1953, was Peter Russell. Coincidentally, Albert Sloman was appointed to the Gilmour Chair of Spanish at Liverpool University from the same date. As noted by Mackenzie in her Introduction II, Atkinson was one of the external assessors consulted by Liverpool over Sloman’s appointment.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the editor.