Some had worked their way through college. One member of the 1904 class, Lawrence Henry Gipson of Idaho, had been both a stagecoach driver and a printer's “devil” and typesetter at his father's small-town newspaper.25 The fathers of these early Rhodes Scholars included bankers, physicians, insurance salesmen, teachers, lawyers, businessmen, and farmers. There were Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and representatives of every major Protestant denomination. The class of 1907 included one black, Alain Locke (who will be discussed further in the next chapter). There was even a set of three brothers: Christopher, Felix, and Frank Morley (1910, 1917, 1919).
The scholars represented a wide array of universities and colleges. There were forty-three Americans in the class of 1904 – no candidates passed the qualifying examination in five states. These forty-three men came from forty-three different institutions. This kind of even dispersal no longer occurs. Changes in the selection process plus other factors in later decades have helped Ivy League and a few other elite universities to claim more than half of the scholars in any given year. Early in the century there was a greater tendency for a bright Nebraska or Wyoming boy to attend a university in his home state rather than elsewhere. Moreover, the college presidents in each state generally preferred to give the scholarships to students who had remained in their home state for their education. Thus the 1904 scholar from Kentucky was a student at Kentucky State University, the Kansan came from the University of Kansas, the Georgian from the University of Georgia, and so on. Not that the elite schools were excluded. The Massachusetts representative, for example, came from Harvard, and the New York winner was a Cornell man.
One ominous question loomed ahead for this melting pot of rambunctious Americans: What would happen to Cecil Rhodes' grand scheme for producing the best men for the world's fight once the scholars reached Oxford?
NOTES
1. For example, see NYT, 5 April 1902, 1; 6 April 1902, 5; 7 April 1902, 1; 25 January 1903, 7; 2 February 1903, 1; 19 July 1903, 9; 9 October 1903, 8; 11 October 1903, 4; 24 March 1904, 5.
2. Lord Elton, ed., The First Fifty Years of the Rhodes Trust and the Rhodes Scholarships (Oxford, 1955), 11, 61; TAO, 51 (1964): 74–83.
3. Thomas Case, “The Influence of Mr. Rhodes' Will on Oxford,” National Review, 39 (1902): 424. Also Elton, First Fifty Years, 59–60.
4. NYT, 9 October 1903, 8. Also see TAO, 2 (1915): 34–44, 21 (1934): 123–31.
5. The Times, 9 May 1902, 10C.
6. See TAO, 21 (1934): 127.
7. TAO, 21 (1934), 126–27; Graham Topping, “The Best Men for the World's Fight?” Oxford Today, Trinity Issue, 1993, 6.
8. Louis Dyer, “The Rhodes Scholarships,” The Outlook, 13 December 1902, 885–86.
9. TAO, 42 (1955): 21 and 52 (1965): 87.
10. Elton, First Fifty Years, 4, 10, 59; TAO, 5 (1918): 81–83, 32 (1945): 8–9, 50 (1963): 64–66, 51 (1964): 76–78, 81 (1994): 3.
11. Initially his title was “agent,” but that was soon changed to “secretary.”
12. That is, eight for Canada proper and one for Newfoundland.
13. See Wylie's article in TAO, 31 (1944): 65–69.
14. Elton, First Fifty Years, 8; TAO, 37 (1950): 65; 54 (1967): 103.
15. Elton, First Fifty Years, 9.
16. NYT, 30 January 1909, 2. Also see 28 January 1914, sec. 4, 2.
17. Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 26; TAO, 81 (1994): 8.
18. Elton, First Fifty Years, 186; Frances Margaret Blanshard, Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore (Middletown, CT, 1970), 49.
19. Elton, First Fifty Years, 63–64.
20. Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 25; TAO, 1 (1914): 63–83. Of course, through the entire history of the program there have also been instances where persons who received the scholarships ended up not using them. A handful of students have died sometime in the months before arriving in Oxford. Over the past ninety years there have also been several students who accepted the scholarships and then later, for personal or academic reasons, decided not to go. The program has never selected alternates or replacements, and thus these positions have gone unfilled.
21. Blanshard, Aydelotte, 51; Alumni Magazine (by the Alumni Association of American Rhodes Scholars), 3 (January 1910): 2.
22. TAO, 37 (1950): 65–66; 44 (1957): 55.
23. Quoted in Milton Mackaye, “What Happens to Our Rhodes Scholars?” Scribner's Magazine, January 1938, 9.
24. Elton, First Fifty Years, 21, 187; Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 25–30; George Parkin, The Rhodes Scholarships (Boston, 1912), 216–17; TAO, 1 (1914): 63; 39 (1952): 114; 40 (1953): 185; 54 (1967): 39.
25. Leslie V. Brock, “Lawrence Henry Gipson: Historian. The Early Idaho Years,” Idaho Yesterdays, 22 (1978): 9; Diane Windham Shaw, comp., Guide to the Papers of Lawrence Henry Gipson (Bethlehem, PA, 1984), 1.
THE SETTING
Yet, O ye spires of Oxford! domes and towers!
Gardens and groves! Your presence overpowers
The Soberness of reason; till, in sooth,
Transformed, and rushing on a bold exchange,
I slight my own beloved Cam, to range
Where silver Isis leads my stripling feet;
Pace the long avenue, or glide adown
The stream-like windings of that glorious street-
An eager novice robed in fluttering gown!
William Wordsworth, 1820
Oxford trains scholars of the real type better than any other place in the world. Its methods are antiquated. It despises science. Its lectures are rotten. It has professors who never teach and students who never learn. It has no order, no arrangement, no system. Its curriculum is unintelligible. It has no president. It has no state legislature to tell how to teach. And yet-it gets there. Whether we like it or not, Oxford gives something to its students, a life and a mode of thought, which in America as yet we can emulate but not equal.
Stephen Leacock, 1922
Town and Gown
What was this university to which Rhodes wanted to send his scholars? Oxford was the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Just how old remains a matter of dispute. Some diehards still claim that the university can be traced to 872, when King Alfred the Great supposedly recognized a group of scholars in the city. Nearly all authorities today, however, agree that the real establishment of the
