Whereas prior to the war the number of applicants had hovered around one hundred per year, in the 1920s it averaged about four hundred and in the 1930s approximately six hundred.19 The popularity of the scholarships is also indicated in two other ways. Already in this period there were several cases of the awards being won by sons or younger brothers of former scholars. Obviously the new winners would not have applied if they had not heard favorable reports from their family members. Some examples include the three Morley brothers already cited, Clayton and Byron White (1935 and 1938), Don and Karl Price (1932 and 1937), and Matthew Brown (1908), father of Gerald Brown (1938). There were at least a half-dozen other similar cases prior to the Second World War. In most instances the sons and younger brothers even entered the same colleges as their predecessors, such as the Morleys at New College and the Whites at Hertford.
The popularity of the scholarships is also revealed by the fact that many college sophomores and juniors sought advice on how to prepare themselves so that by the time they were seniors they met the criteria for winning. Though no statistics are available, it is also evident that dozens of applicants who failed to win on their first try applied again a year later. They spent the intervening year in graduate school or in jobs, often working on projects that would impress the selection committees. Several of these applicants did win on their second or even their third tries.20
What did the scholars of the interwar period discover once they arrived in Oxford? That will be the topic of the next two chapters.
NOTES
1. Harrison, Twentieth Century, 6, 15; Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 57. Oxford, and nowadays a handful of other British universities, uses the term “D.Phil.” instead of “Ph.D.” Not to be outdone by its adversary, Cambridge established a Ph.D. program in 1920.
2. Items by and about Aydelotte in TAO are too numerous to list. For his obituary see 44 (1957): 49-62. Blanshard, Aydelotte, is thorough and valuable, though too partial toward its subject.
3. TAO, 6 (1919): 128-29; Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 27-29, 38.
4. Harrison, Twentieth Century, 29,37; TAO, 6 (1919): 38, 43, 49, 129.
5. TAO, 6 (1919): 51.
6. Elton, First Fifty Years, 112-13; TAO, 8 (1921): 102-6.
7. Between 1919 and 1925 several persons served as General Secretary. From 1925 to 1939 Philip Kerr (later Lord Lothian) held the post. He was succeeded by Lord Elton (1939-1959). Since 1959 the position of General Secretary has been held by the Oxford Secretary.
8. Elton, First Fifty Years, 23; TAO, 16 (1929): 120-21; 19 (1932): 164-65.
9. TAO, 16 (1929): 1-3, 163-91.
10. Elton, First Fifty Years, 26.
11. Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 30.
12. In 1928 the word “alumni” was dropped from the association and the organization acquired a constitution and board of directors. See TAO, 15 (1928): 79-96, 179, 243.
13. Applicants from Washington, DC, had already for several years been placed with those from Maryland.
14. Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 31-37; TAO, 15 (1928): 64-65; 16 (1929): 143-48; 17 (1930): 52-53, 63, 69-97; 25 (1938): 87-89, 157-62.
15. At first Malta produced one scholar every three years. After 1942 it was one per year.
16. Elton, First Fifty Years, 108. Also see TAO, 6 (1919): 123-25; 7 (1920): 152-54.
17. Don K. Price, “A Yank at Oxford: Specializing for Breadth,” American Scholar, 55 (1986): 195.
18. Boorstin interview, 9 June 1994.
19. TAO, 10 (1923): 7-8; 11 (1924): 56; 18 (1931): 1-3; 22 (1935): 138.
20. TAO, 21 (1934): 187-92; 50 (1963): 135; Laurence A. Crosby and Frank Aydelotte, eds., Oxford of Today: A Manual for Prospective Rhodes Scholars (New York, 1922).
INTERWAR YEARS
Society and Study
If only those gates would open.
If only those gates would yawn.
Down the Turl I would be lopin'
Before you even knew that I was gone.
But they're not, so what's the use?
I've got those claustrophobia blues.
If only this town had a woman
Who would sell herself at reasonable rates.
If only Oxford were human,
I could get my mind off those gates.
But she's not – a screw is loose.
I've got those claustrophobia blues.
Those walls are creepin' up upon me.
They're gettin' closer every day.
I can't see the stars for the bolts and the bars,
Oh-de, oh-de, oh-de-ay!
If only this damn monastery
Would burn to the ground or such!
If only the porter had a fairly decent daughter
Who'd be susceptible to the touch.
But he hasn't, I've hidden the booze.
I've got those claustrophobia blues.
Claustrophobia blues!
“Claustrophobia Blues,” song by Walt Whitman Rostow and Gordon Craig
Déjà Vu
The Rhodes Scholar experience of the 1920s and 1930s retained many similarities and yet was remarkably different from that of the earlier years. Like their predecessors, most of the Americans of this generation too were from small towns and had traveled little previously.
J. William Fulbright (1925) later admitted that going from Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Oxford was a “tremendous shock,” like Alice in Wonderland.1 At the University of Arkansas he had been an avid golfer and a star on the tennis and football teams. In later life he admitted that his Rhodes Scholarship owed more to his athletic prowess and to the campaigning of his mother with members of the selection committee than to his academic record.2 Initially he was embarrassed by his intellectual inadequacy. He found his essays “hard as the dickens to write” and he felt like a “bonehead.”3 But he loved the friendly atmosphere at Pembroke College. He had the good fortune to study history under a brilliant young Scotsman named Ronald Buchanan McCallum; Fulbright happily reported to his family that his tutor had “not yet acquired the academic air.”4 Within a few weeks he settled into a comfortable routine of tea, rugby, lacrosse, conversation, reading, and cultural outings. He spent most vacations roaming