Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T07:49:17.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

FRACTURED FAMILIES: EDUCATED ELITES IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE GREAT WAR*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2014

TOMÁS IRISH
TOMÁS IRISH*
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin
*
Centre for War Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of university elites in Britain and France during and after the First World War. It compares the elite network of the École Normale Supérieure with that of Trinity and King's Colleges in Cambridge, arguing that these communities functioned and understood themselves as families. The war, which suspended normal intellectual practice and placed mobilized university elites (as junior officers) at an increased risk of wounds or death, was seen as a threat to the very existence of the family. The article traces the responses of these groups to the outbreak of war, to the cessation of normal scholarly life, and to the shocking death rate; in so doing, it demonstrates the resilience of these networks. To date, historians have drawn on the writings of members of these families to make broader arguments about the war experience. This study is the first to examine the self-perception of these groups, and in so doing, provides a new context for scholarly activities during and after the war, bereavement, and remembrance, as well as for academic practices in the post-war period. As a Franco-British comparison, it argues for great similarities of experience between two superficially disparate university cultures

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 509 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to John Horne, Ciarán O'Neill, Heather Ellis, and to the two anonymous Historical Journal reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article and to Sarah Frank for taking the image of the Monument aux morts at the ENS.

References

1 Winter, Jay, The Great War and the British people (London, 1985), pp. 92–9Google Scholar; Sirinelli, Jean-François, Génération intellectuelle: khâgneux et normaliens dans l'entre-deux-guerres (Paris, 1988), pp. 26–30Google Scholar; Carr, Richard and Hart, Bradley W., ‘Old Etonians, Great War demographics and the interpretations of British eugenics c. 1914–1939’, First World War Studies, 3 (Oct. 2012), pp. 217–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hynes, Samuel, The Auden generation: literature and politics in England in the 1930s (London, 1976), pp. 17–37Google Scholar.

2 The work of Thomas Weber is one exception to this, although his study does not explicitly deal with the war period. Our friend ‘the enemy’: elite education in Britain and Germany before World War I (Stanford, CA, 2008).

3 Levsen, Sonja, ‘Constructing elite identities: university students, military masculinity and the consequences of the Great War in Britain and Germany’, Past and Present, 198 (2008), pp. 147–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deslandes, Paul, Oxbridge men: British masculinity and the undergraduate experience, 1850–1920 (Bloomington, IN, 2005)Google Scholar; Hanna, Martha, The mobilization of intellect: French scholars and writers during the Great War (Cambridge, MA, 1996)Google Scholar; Wallace, Stuart, War and the image of Germany: British academics, 1914–1918 (Edinburgh, 1988)Google Scholar; and Gruber, Carol, Mars and minerva: World War I and the uses of higher learning in America (Baton Rouge, LA, 1975)Google Scholar.

4 Allan, Graham, Kinship and friendship in modern Britain (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; and Pitt-Rivers, Julian, ‘The kith and the kin’, in Goody, Jack, ed., The character of kinship (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 89–109Google Scholar; Winter, Jay, ‘Forms of kinship and remembrance in the aftermath of the Great War’, in Winter, Jay and Sivan, Emmanuel, eds., War and remembrance in the twentieth century (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 41–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winter, Jay, Sites of memory, sites of mourning: the Great War in European cultural history (Cambridge, 1995), p. 79Google Scholar.

5 Pitt-Rivers, ‘The kith and the kin’, p. 90; Davidoff, Leonore et al. , The family story: blood, contract and intimacy, 1830–1960 (London, 1999), p. 81Google Scholar.

6 Morgan, D. H. J., ‘The social definition of the family’, in Anderson, Michael, ed., Sociology of the family: selected readings (Harmondsworth, 1980), pp. 325–8Google Scholar.

7 Allan, Kinship and friendship in modern Britain, pp. 37–43.

8 Ibid., pp. 94–5.

9 Davidoff et al., The family story, pp. 80–1.

10 Deslandes, Oxbridge men, pp. 22–8.

11 Alma mater translates as benevolent mother, and was frequently used as a synonym for the university itself.

12 For example, Oxford only gave women full membership of the university in 1919, while at Cambridge this did not happen until 1948.

13 Lubenow, W. C., The Cambridge Apostles: liberalism, imagination, and friendship in British intellectual and professional life (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 38–52Google Scholar.

14 Levy, Paul, G. E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles (Oxford, 1981), p. 264Google Scholar.

15 Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes, G. E. Moore, G. H. Hardy, and Lytton Strachey were all members. W. C. Lubenow calls them ‘an elite within an elite’. The Cambridge Apostles, p. xiii.

16 Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, pp. 110, 116.

17 Rothblatt, Sheldon, The revolution of the dons: Cambridge and society in Victorian England (Cambridge, 1968), p. 222Google Scholar.

18 Ellis, Heather, Generational conflict and university reform: Oxford in the age of revolution (Leiden, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, pp. 96–7; Cannadine, David, The decline and fall of the British aristocracy (London, 1992), pp. 31–8Google Scholar.

20 Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, p. 141.

21 For an overview of the history of the ENS, see Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle, and see Peyrefitte, Alain, ed., Rue d'Ulm: chroniques de la vie normalienne (Paris, 1994)Google Scholar.

22 For an overview of the role played by the ENS during the Dreyfus Affair, see Winock, Michel, Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris, 1997), pp. 11–126Google Scholar; Harris, Ruth, The man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the affair that divided France (London, 2010), pp. 135–53Google Scholar; Weisz, George, The emergence of modern universities in France, 1863–1914 (Princeton, NJ, 1983), pp. 341–3Google Scholar, 347.

23 Ibid., p. 283.

24 On the modern history of Cambridge University, see Brooke, C. N. L., A history of the university of Cambridge (4 vols., Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar, iv.

25 Weisz, The emergence of modern universities in France.

26 Roper, Michael, The secret battle: emotional survival in the Great War (Manchester, 2010), pp. 3–6Google Scholar, 15, 72; Hanna, Martha, Your death would be mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War (Cambridge, MA, 2006)Google Scholar.

27 Mommsen, Wolfgang J., ‘German artists, writers, and intellectuals, and the meaning of war, 1914–1918’, in Horne, John, ed., State, society and mobilization in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 21–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ringer, Fritz K., The decline of the German mandarins: the German academic community, 1890–1933 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 180–90Google Scholar; Kramer, Alan, Dynamic of destruction: culture and mass killing in the First World War (Oxford, 2007), pp. 159–64Google Scholar; Hanna, The mobilization of intellect, pp. 78–85; Prochasson, Christophe and Rasmussen, Anne, Au nom de la patrie: les intellectuels et la première guerre mondiale (Paris, 1996)Google Scholar.

28 Hayes, Carlton J., France: a nation of patriots (New York, NY, 1930; reprint, 1974), pp. 64–8Google Scholar; Horne, John,‘Defining the enemy: war, law, and the levée en masse from 1870 to 1945’, in Moran, Daniel and Waldron, Arthur, eds., The people in arms: military myth and national mobilization since the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 100–24Google Scholar.

29 Gregory, Adrian, The last Great War: British society and the First World War (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 73–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beckett, Ian F. W. and Simpson, Keith, eds., A nation in arms: a social study of the British Army in the First World War (Manchester, 1985)Google Scholar.

30 It should be stressed that in the British case enlistment was most pronounced from September 1914. Pennell, Catriona, A kingdom united: popular responses to the outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2012), pp. 51–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels, pp. 162–5.

32 The historian Denys Winstanley, a fellow of Trinity College, had been a member of the anti-war movement but then changed his mind, arguing that ‘it would have been very difficult for this country to have avoided going to war’. Winstanley to J. R. M Butler, 19 Aug. 1914, Trinity College Library Cambridge (TCLC), JRMB/A1/72.

33 Gregory, The last Great War, p. 25; Pennell, A kingdom united, pp. 221–6.

34 Christopher Benson, Arthur, ‘An impression of the war’, Atlantic Monthly, 118 (July 1916), p. 126Google Scholar.

35 Liard to T. Gregory Foster, 6 Oct. 1914, Archives Nationales, Paris (AN) 61/AJ/85.

36 Speech of M. R. James, Cambridge University Reporter, 45 (2 Oct. 1914), p. 42.

37 ‘King's College Cambridge, 14 Nov. 1914: annual report of the council’, King's College archive centre (KCAC), King's College, Annual Report of Council, II, 1911–31, p. 10.

38 Unsigned letter to Ernest Lavisse, 6 Aug. 1915, AN/61AJ/85.

39 Circular letter of Lavisse, 6 Oct. 1914, AN/61/AJ/85.

40 Memorandum of Lavisse, 14 Oct. 1914, AN/AJ/16/2886.

41 Hanna, The mobilization of intellect, pp. 60–1.

42 Butler, J. R. M., Henry Montagu Butler: Master of Trinity College Cambridge, 1886–1918 (London, 1925), p. 201Google Scholar.

43 By early 1915, of 196 normaliens mobilized, 82 had been killed. ‘La réunion des anciens Normaliens’, Le Figaro, 11 Jan. 1915, p. 2, see also ‘Les normaliens’, Le Figaro, 10 Jan. 1916, p. 3.

44 Boutroux, Emile, Philosophy and war (London, 1916), p. 128Google Scholar.

45 Roper, The secret battle, p. 72.

46 Étévé to René M., 30 Aug. 1915, in Marcel Étévé: lettres d'un combattant (aout 1914 – juillet 1916), préface de M. Paul Dupuy (Paris, 1917), p. 91.

47 Masson to his wife, 24 May, 1915, in Masson, Lettres de guerre, aout 1914 – avril 1916 (Paris, 1917), p. 103.

48 Wittgenstein to Russell, 5 Feb. 1915, in McGuinness, Brian and Wright, G. H. Von, eds., Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge letters. Correspondence with Russell, Keynes, Moore, Ramsay and Sraffa (Oxford, 1996), p. 97Google Scholar.

49 Russell to Wittgenstein, 10 May 1915, ibid., p. 100.

50 Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, p. 194.

51 Keeling to Mrs Green, 9 July 1916, in Keeling, F. H, Keeling letters and recollections (New York, NY, 1916), p. 301Google Scholar.

52 Gordon Butler to James Butler, 29 Oct. 1914, TCLC, JRMB/M5/1/43.

53 Gordon Butler to Nevile Butler, 22 Sept. 1915, TCLC, JRMB/M5/1/92.

54 Winstanley to James Butler, 17 Jan. 1917, TCLC, JRMB/A1/98.

55 Roper, The secret battle, p. 15.

56 Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, p. 414; Levy, G. E. Moore, pp. 310–11.

57 Lucas, F. L., preface to Férenc Békássy, Adriatica and other poems (London, 1925)Google Scholar, p. v.

58 Skidelsky, Robert, John Maynard Keynes (3 vols., London, 1983)Google Scholar, i, p. 295; G. H. Luce to Keynes, 28 Nov. 1914, KCAC, JMK/PP/45/193/123.

59 Unsent letter from Békássy to Keynes, 6 Jan. 1915, KCAC, JMK/PP/45/24/29.

60 Lucas to Keynes, 23 July 1915, KCAC, JMK/PP/45/192/24.

61 Ballweg, John A., ‘Extensions of meaning and use for kinship terms’, American Anthropologist, New Series, 71 (Feb. 1969), pp. 84–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Benson, A. C., Memories and friends (London, 1924), p. 325Google Scholar.

63 Keynes to Duncan Grant, 25 Apr. 1915; Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, i, p. 302.

64 Ibid., p. 296.

65 Diary entry, 13 Nov. 1916, St John's College Library, Cambridge, Glover diary.

66 Fournier, Marcel, Marcel Mauss: a biography (Princeton, NJ, 2006), p. 177Google Scholar.

67 Étévé to his mother, 1 Oct. 1914, Étévé, Lettres d'un combattant, p. 8.

68 Étévé to Dupuy, 4 May 1915, ibid., p. 37.

69 Ibid.

70 Étévé to René M., 26 Aug. 1915, ibid., p. 89.

71 Étévé to René M., 30 Aug. 1915, ibid., p. 91.

72 Étévé to his mother, 19 Apr. 1916, ibid., p. 193.

73 Durkheim to Mauss, 22 Apr. 1915, in Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier, eds., Durkheim, Lettres à Marcel Mauss (Paris, 1998), p. 454.

74 Lukes, Steven, Emile Durkheim, his life and work: a historical and critical study (Stanford, CA, 1985), pp. 555–6Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., p. 556.

76 Fournier, Marcel Mauss, p. 178.

77 Lanson to Nicholas Murray Butler, 4 June 1916; Columbia University Archives Central Files, 665/41.

78 Rapport de M. le Professeur Lanson, AN/AJ/16/4752.

79 Gustave Cohen to Lanson, unsent letter, 20 Apr. 1916. AN/AP/59/1.

80 Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, i, pp. 319–26.

81 Ibid., pp. 326–7.

82 Hardy did not name his accusers, claimed that he was ‘generally regarded’ as a conscientious objector. Hardy to Keynes, 1 Aug. 1916, KCAC, PP/JMK/35/L/16/46.

83 Hardy to Keynes, 23 July 1916, KCAC, PP/JMK/35/L/16/42.

84 Allan, Kinship and friendship in modern Britain, p. 43.

85 Masson to his wife, 24 May 1915, Masson, Lettres de guerre, p. 103.

86 Monk, Ray, Bertrand Russell: the spirit of solitude (London, 1996), pp. 465–6Google Scholar.

87 Hardy, G. H., Bertrand Russell and Trinity: a controversy of the last war (Cambridge, 1942), p. 42Google Scholar.

88 H. M. Butler to J. R. M Butler, 25 Jan. 1917. TCLC, JRMB/A1/99.

89 Levy, G. E. Moore, pp. 288–9.

90 Winstanley to J. R. M. Butler, 18 Mar. 1917, TCLC, JRMB/A1/100.

91 Hardy, Bertrand Russell and Trinity.

92 Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning, p. 79.

93 Winter, Jay, Remembering war: the Great War between memory and history in the twentieth century (New Haven, CT, 2006) pp. 138–9Google Scholar.

94 Carey, G. V., ed., War list of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1921), p. 536Google Scholar.

95 Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle, p. 28.

96 Report on war dead, AN/AJ/61/163.

97 Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, p. 413.

98 Lucas, Preface, Adriatica, p. vi.

99 Paul Dupuy, Mes morts (Paris, 1924).

100 Ibid., p. 75.

101 Hynes, The Auden generation, pp. 17–24.

102 Ibid., pp. 24–5.

103 Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes, The autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson (London, 1973), p. 195Google Scholar.

104 André Guérin, ‘Souvenirs de la promotion de 1919’, in Peyrefitte, ed., Rue d'Ulm, p. 43.

105 Lanson to the vice-rector of the Academy of Paris, 7 Feb. 1921, AN/AJ/16/2886.

106 Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle, pp. 314–17.

107 ‘Lecteurs d'allemand, 1910–1946’, AN/AJ/16/2890.

108 Jules Pekar to André Honnorat, 29 Apr. 1922, AN/AJ/61/87.

109 Fournier, Marcel Mauss, p. 175.

110 Mauss, Marcel, ‘In memoriam: l’œuvre inédit de Durkheim et de ses collaborateurs’, Année sociologique, nouvelle série, 1 (1923–4), p. 7Google Scholar.

111 Ibid., p. 29.

112 Vernon, Keith, Universities and the state in England, 1850–1939 (London, 2004), p. 189Google Scholar.

113 Rothblatt, The revolution of the dons, pp. 243–4.

114 Hanna, The mobilization of intellect, pp. 209, 230–41.

115 Overy, Richard, The morbid age: Britain and the crisis of civilization, 1919–1939 (London, 2009)Google Scholar.

116 Amazingly, A. C. Benson articulated this during the war itself. Meanwhile: a packet of war letters (London, 1916), p. 24.