Worcester College MS 278: “To Emily Daniel in memory of the war-work done in the Provost’s Lodgings at Worcester College…”

The Sheldonian Theatre and its environs from William Williams’ Oxonia Depicta (Oxford, 1733)

In this week of Encaenia, as honorands receive their degrees at the Sheldonian they pass by thirteen carved stone heads outside the theatre.  Our treasure this month has a link to the history of these heads, two of which (from the first of three sets to grace the Sheldonian precinct) can normally be found in the Provost’s Rose Garden.

Within the pages of a volume of William Blake’s Poetical Works, beautifully bound in full tooled leather, decorated with gilt edges and marked with the initials ‘E D’ on the cover, are bound 16 pages, recording thanks to Emily Daniel, wife of Charles Daniel, Worcester’s seventh Provost.  During the First World War Mrs Daniel had organised war work, making bandages and surgical appliances in the Provost’s Lodgings, and in ‘appreciation of her perpetual kindness & courtesy & cheerful hospitality’ her fellow volunteers made a gift of this volume, with their names signed on pages inserted at the front.  At the end of this list of donors, Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate since 1913, has added a poem,

And I am asked for mere variety

To join my name with this society….

“Verses Written for Mrs Daniel” (eventually published in full by the Clarendon Press in 1932, although selections were published by the Clarendon Press in 1923 as Appendix E, “The ‘Sheldonian Grotesques’”, to W. D. Caröe’s Wren and Tom Tower) recounts Bridges’ friendship with the Daniels, the hospitality and conversation he enjoyed either by the fireside in winter, or in summer in the garden, passing

‘.. where in the garden entry

A monstrous effigy stood sentry,

One of those column-heads which Wren

Contracted for at two-pound-ten

To top the wall he built between

Theatre & road his work to screen….’

Bridges goes into some detail on these heads of ‘metaphysic sages’, noting their weathering through time, which ‘Left all who look’d on them uncertain | Whether the comical old fossils | Were sages Kaisers or Apostles’, and the decision of the curators to replace them with newly carved versions in 1868.

Bridges’ poem states that Daniel acquired the head second from the right (‘Second in rank from th’old Ashmolean [i.e. now the History of Science Museum]’) and then displayed it in the garden of his home, Worcester House, now demolished, but once located on the corner of Worcester Street and Hythe Bridge Street.  On his election as Provost in 1903, one surmises that Daniel brought the head with him to the Provost’s Garden, where it now occupies a corner of the Rose Garden, designed by Alfred Parsons that same year.  A second head joined it there before 1948 (when both were photographed by Country Life for a feature on the Provost’s Lodgings).

Plan of Worcester House

Both heads are from the original fourteen commissioned by Wren in 1669.  The work of the sculptor William Byrd, they were carved in Tayton limestone, which although hard had weathered to such an extent by 1868 that they had to be replaced by a second set of heads.  The second set lasted a much shorter time and were replaced in 1972 with a third generation, still in place.

The book, gifted first to Mrs Emily Daniel in 1919, was given to the College in 1953 by her younger daughter, Ruth, in memory of her mother.

The volume also includes newspaper clippings, two of which commemorate the war work at Worcester:

Two more have a link to the Sheldonian Heads:

Clearly the link with the Sheldonian heads meant something to a former owner, and, indeed, Bridges’ poem is the earliest evidence we have for the presence of at least one of the heads in Worcester grounds.  That head is on display in the Bodleian’s Weston Library until 21^st July 2019 and we would encourage people to visit it there.  Indeed, it is part of a project with Worcester links, ‘Heritage Heads’, involving our Senior Research Fellow Professor Heather Viles.  If anyone knows how the second head came to the College, do let us know!

Mark Bainbridge, Librarian

This piece was updated on 28^th August 2019 to note the 1923 publication of parts of the poem in Wren and Tom Tower by W. D. Caröe.  I thank Wesley B. Tanner for this correction.