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Stray Reflections

The Silver Jubilee Committee has been good enough to ask me to contribute something to the Jubilee issue of "The Spike." I am not sure that I can produce anything very interesting but I can at least congratulate the College very warmly on having attained its Silver Jubilee, as well as on having the energy and the enterprise to celebrate the occasion.

On such an occasion one's thoughts naturally turn backwards. And mine just now revert, not merely to the year 1899, but twelve years further back, to 1887, when Sir Robert Stout, then Prime Minister, made the first attempt to establish a University College in Wellington. It is needless to dwell on the political conditions which strangled the attempt, or on the apathy of the citizens of Wellington which allowed the question to slumber for ten years. The College, when it did come, was really a "gesture" on Mr Seddon's part, the idea being to give practical form to the glow of enthusiasm which followed the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

However, this is a discursive paper, and not a historical or political treatise. My own direct practical interest in the College began while it was still in the embryonic stage, and not yet "in being"; namely, as candidate for its first Chair of Classics. But the Chair fell into the more worthy hands which have now maintained its dignity and promoted its efficiency for a quarter of a century. I lost the Chair, but I found a friend. However, a little later on, during its early struggles, I did have some slight connection with the teaching work of the College. These were the days when, through paucity of staff, every man had not only to do the job to which he had been appointed, but to take on any other additional job that might be assigned to him. Thus, Prof. Brown took on French; the brilliant and lamented Maclaurin took on Law (in which of course, he was a master); while I—somewhat anomalously while Registrar of the University—took German for a year, pending the appointment of a regular Professor. There was all the charm of make-shift about many of the original arrangements.

It was a time, too, of rapid transformations. Each day what had been a girls' school up to 5 p.m. suddenly became a University College; "teachers" vanished, and "professors" appeared; "lessons" gave way to "lectures"; "pupils" yielded place to "students." The staff of the older institution naturally shuddered a little, as over an invasion of Huns. The School magazine melted into elegiac poetry over the rampageous doings of the terrible "college man" in regard to the property of hapless maidens. But things settled down; good relations were gradually established, and the prevailing atmosphere became one of mutual consideration and goodwill. As for the accommodation, many a great university has initiated its career under far more serious inconveniences. The first batch of students took it all in their stride, cherishing the vision of palatial buildings to come.

And what of that first batch of students? A mere handful they appear now, in contrast with the serried ranks of later days. The faces and voices of many of them rise before me, across this distance of space and time. I should like to mention some names, but it would be invidious. Few though they were, they have their place in academic history. They laid foundations on which page 19 great things were to be erected. They did not stand gaping about them, wondering how they ever came there, and where they should begin to live the new life. They went red-hot and eyes-out straight for College life, as if from the starter's pistol. College patriotism and College fraternity sprang into existence as if by enchantment. They set up committees and organised entertainments, I remember some of them. True, the programmes were a little bizarre; the "funny man" (you all remember him!) played a great part. Then the chorus "Knew a Tavern in the Town"; and so on. Beginnings are generally crude. Later on, the College was to produce a real poet, good music, and an excellent group of Capping-song writers.

I heartily congratulate the College—Council, Staff and Students—on the work which it has achieved and is achieving. It. has become a power in the land. So far as higher examination results are concerned, I have, year by year, first hand knowledge of its progress as these results pass first through my hands. Occasionally there is a burst of phenomenal brilliancy. A little while ago I gazed in speechless amazement at a Double First class in two Uni-Lingual Honour Schools, with an average over all of nearly 90 per cent. Though in constant contact with such matters, it took me some time to grasp the full significance of such a performance. But, leaving examination out of account, if I were asked what qualities, in a broad, general way, are most conspicuous in Victoria University College, I should probably say, vitality and enterprise, and at this Silver Jubilee the students will not forget that they inherited these qualities from the "Old Contemptibles" of 1899.

J. W. Joynt