Her Oxford

9. New Principals, New Premises

130 9 New Principals, New Premises S omerville was forced to look for a new principal after Agnes Maitland’s death in 1906, and the council unanimously voted to offer the position to Emily Penrose, a Somerville student between 1889 and 1892. When she accepted the principalship, she became the first former student, but by no means the last, to return as head of an Oxford women’s college. Somerville made a fortunate choice, for few could have been as well suited to lead women students into the twentieth century as Emily Penrose. Blessed with intellect and vision, she was the first Oxford woman principal “to combine high administrative ability with academic achievement.”1 Emily Penrose at Somerville When Miss Penrose took up her post at Somerville in the spring of 1907, raising academic standards became one of her top priorities. Although eight Somervillians had recently earned first-class honours in final examinations , an unprecedented achievement for Oxford women, Emily Penrose made it clear that all Somerville students were to get on a degree track and abide by the same regulations regarding residence and preliminary examinations as undergraduates. She believed that the strongest argument for allowing women degrees would be the number of women who qualified for them, and she refused to admit students who were not prepared to take the full degree course. This far-sighted perspective, at a time when degree prospects for women did not look promising, paid off. When women were granted the opportunity to take degrees in 1920, Somervillians from Miss Penrose’s era became immediately eligible, while many women from other colleges could not claim their BAs until they passed the preliminary examinations they had been allowed to skip. In a further effort to accept only women able to fulfill Somerville’s expectations of them, the college instituted its own entrance examination in 1908, the first of the women’s colleges to do so. In 1907, the first rule for admission to Somerville stated: “Every applicant must satisfy the Principal . . . that she is qualified to profit by the course of study at Oxford.”2 By New Principals, New Premises 131 1908, that sentence had been changed to read: “Every applicant must pass the college Entrance Examination before admission.”3 Students were also required to pass responsions or some equivalent examination before taking up their college residence. Miss Penrose’s intelligence and administrative ability impressed everyone who worked with her. In a history of Somerville, Pauline ­ Adams wrote that the new principal’s skills made it difficult for anyone to argue convincingly “either for the intellectual inferiority of women, or for their unfitness for university business.”4 Her leadership skills did not, however , always translate to a personal level. Excessively shy, she often seemed brusque and aloof, and she had no gift for small talk. Moreover, she was physically imposing—almost six feet tall—and frequently presented a stern and unyielding exterior. Many people were too intimidated to try to break through her reserve, but those who dared discovered, by their own accounts, a generous and sympathetic character. Building on Miss Maitland’s work, Emily Penrose further strengthened Somerville’s tutorial staff and lured two women to Oxford who had been tutors at Royal Holloway College: Helen Darbishire in English and Margaret Hayes Robinson in history. Miss Darbishire (Somerville 1900) made a name for herself as a scholar of Milton and Wordsworth and eventually succeeded Margery Fry as principal of Somerville in 1931. Miss Hayes Robinson, who gained a first in modern history at St. Hilda’s in 1898, had been extremely popular at Royal Holloway, and she impressed the young Vera Brittain when the latter entered Somerville in 1914. Women dons had already earned a sometimes well-deserved reputation for dowdiness, but Vera viewed Miss Hayes Robinson as feminine and attractive—“To see her is to feel that a don’s life need not be a narrow routine and therefore a thing to dread.”5 Miss Penrose also worked to raise the status of tutors within the college, a process that finally resulted in their admission to membership of the Somerville Council in 1921—a further step toward self-governance. Additionally, the new principal presided over a major transformation in Somerville’s appearance and tradition. Up to 1913, the college consisted of a scattered collection of buildings, with the new library providing the only linkage. Students were housed in two halls, each with its own dining and drawing room, separate accommodations that probably did...