of the Brakenbury Society, and a member of Vincent's Club. Yet he won the prestigious Gladstone Memorial Prize for an essay he wrote and obtained a First in Modern History. The most anglophilic of the early scholars and the one who attracted the most attention was Christopher Morley. He was the oldest of the three Morley brothers to win the scholarship. Their parents had emigrated from Britain to the United States in 1887. The father, Frank Morley, Sr., was professor of mathematics at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. In 1900 the family moved to Baltimore, where Professor Morley joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University. All three sons, however, returned to Haverford for their college education.24 Chris (or “Kit,” as his English relatives called him) was a thoroughgoing American and yet was to have a lifelong love of all things English. He was enchanted when he first entered New College in 1910. He never tired of showing visitors the magnificent gardens, the medieval tower, the cloisters, and the well-known Warden: Rev. W.A. Spooner, or “the Spoo,” whose spoonerisms added luster to the already venerable institution. Even as a student Morley possessed the rotundity that would later be part of his fame, but he cheerfully tried to do his part in college sports. His chief interests, however, lay in activities like afternoon teas in country inns, debates, and discussions at the college literary society. His first book, a collection of poems entitled The Eighth Sin, was published by Blackwell's while he was still in Oxford.25
Despite the evidence for the Americans fitting in socially, there were nagging problems that refused to go away. From the beginning, the newcomers were thought to be too cliquish. The Americans hung around too much together rather than blending in with other students. They even experimented with a variety of nicknames that would set them apart: Rhodesters, Rhodesmen, Rhodents, Rhodians, Rhodensians, Rhododendrons.26 Rhodes Scholars clustered together each week in the homes of three different ladies who came to be their “mothers” away from home. Miss Crocker, Miss Guiney, and Mrs. Thayer were Americans who lived in Oxford. They delighted in giving food and entertainment to their homesick young countrymen.27
Starting in 1904 and continuing for several years nearly all the American scholars pooled their funds, hired rooms at the poshest hotel in town (the Randolph), and commissioned the preparation of an American-style Thanksgiving feast. The usual meal consisted of “mock turkey,” Brussels sprouts, potatoes, and “American ices” (i.e., ice cream). The Americans hoped that perhaps within a quarter of a century they might be able to train the English chef to match the standards of American culinary excellence.28
The thing that seemed most anti-social was that the Americans formed their own clubs. Some were short-lived, like the Hermit Crabs, a literary club formed in 1912.29 The one that had the most members and lasted longest was the one whose very name trumpeted its foreignness: the American Club. It survived from 1904 to 1926 and would reappear, sometimes under slightly different names, on and off until the 1980s. This club's headquarters was usually a nondescript set of rooms rented somewhere in town. There one could usually find American magazines and newspapers scattered around on tattered furniture. College pennants were tacked to the walls. The highlights of the year were the two or three times when famous Americans who were visiting Oxford might stop by and give a little speech. In the years prior to 1914 the club was visited by such persons as Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Jennings Bryan.30
Occasionally British opposition to the club became serious enough to cause major concerns for George Parkin and Francis Wylie. They had their misgivings about the organization, but they did not interfere.31 In October 1910 Daily Mail declaimed:
…the American Rhodes Scholars…do not foster that good understanding [with the British]. As one of the Oxford undergraduates he should join in their social life. He should make friends with them, should in fact become their brother during his three years at the University. He does none of these things. After the first week at Oxford the American murmurs at British insularity and retires into his shell, the American Club, where he reads American newspapers, discusses American politics, sings American songs and might just as well be back in America for all the good he does himself in Oxford.32
This article produced a flurry of debate both in Britain and the United States and created the biggest crisis faced by the young program. The New York Times ran a series of articles with titles like “Rhodes Scholars Disappoint Oxford.”33 One Rhodes Scholar voiced the opinion of all his classmates when he reacted to the Daily Mail: “Oh, it makes us hot!” The Americans noted that most of them participated widely in British sports and social clubs. What was wrong, they asked, if occasionally they gathered among themselves to read and talk about home?
Despite this controversy, the American Club survived. The Daily Mail article clearly exaggerated a criticism that only a few Britons had about only a few the Americans. Furthermore, more rational observers agreed that a small group of people from any nation might tend to band together occasionally if they found themselves living together in a foreign land.
The American Club was little different from what the British students themselves sometimes did. Those who had become friends at Eton or other public schools often stuck together and formed their own clubs in Oxford. Here again it was the Americans on whom the spotlight shone. They were from that upstart, rambunctious world power that fascinated, and, sometimes, repelled Europeans. Rhodes Scholars from elsewhere came from less important nations and were too small in number to attract the kind of attention that Americans did. At the same time that the American Club was formed, scholars from British dominions formed a Colonial Club, and the Germans had their own club. Yet these clubs attracted virtually no attention or controversy.
The Issue of Race
One of the least happy of the early Rhodes Scholars was Alain LeRoy Locke (1907). He was black. Those who did the most to ostracize him were not the British, but his fellow American Rhodes Scholars. He had been born and raised in Philadelphia, where his father was a lawyer and his mother a public school teacher. He obtained his B.A. at Harvard, where he made Phi Beta Kappa. That in itself was remarkable, for until the 1960s no more than two or three blacks could ever be found in any of the top American universities. Locke decided to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship because he wanted to study the issue of color outside the United States.
Since 1904 the American selection committees had wondered whether blacks were eligible to apply. Whenever they asked the Rhodes Trustees, the latter always said “yes.” The trustees cited Rhodes' will, which said that neither race nor religion should be an issue-though, as noted earlier, Rhodes had never envisaged this clause including blacks.
At Harvard Locke scored first in the qualifying exam, beating seven white students. He chose to apply from his home state of Pennsylvania. The selection committee there had received such laudatory reports about him from Harvard that they made up their minds in his favor even before seeing him. They were shocked to discover that he was black, but they concluded that this should not serve as an excuse to reverse their earlier decision.34
When the news of his election spread through the United States and Britain, the reaction was swift. Newly elected Rhodes Scholars and those already in Oxford, particularly those from southern states, protested the inclusion of a Negro in their “brotherhood.” Some threatened to resign. A delegation went from Oxford to London, where they presented their case to the trustees. The latter, however, stood behind Rhodes' will and refused to invalidate Locke's award.35 After Locke received the scholarship, he proceeded to apply for admittance to an Oxford college. Five colleges rejected him, on the basis of his race. One wonders how they knew in advance that he was black. It must have been Francis Wylie who, for whatever reason, mentioned it. The rejection by five colleges was unusual, because every Oxford college at that time had at least a handful of blacks or persons of “color.” These were students from the British Empire in Africa and Asia. At any rate, we shall never know all the details. Locke finally was accepted by Hertford College.36
After arriving in Oxford, Locke was denied membership
