Lt Donald Bell died on 16 July 1916 on the Somme. Bell had been at Westminster College from 1908-11 and then became a school teacher at Starbeck Primary School and a professional footballer, playing for Bradford. He joined the West Yorkshire Regiment in 1914 and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Green Howards in 1915. On 5 July at Horseshoe trench he captured a machine-gun nest, thereby saving many of his comrades’ lives. But five days later he died during a further engagement on the Somme. His grave is at Gordon Dump Cemetery in Albert, but a monument, called Bell’s Redoubt, is at Contalmaison, where he died. In 2010 the Professional Footballers’ Association bought his VC, which is now in their museum (http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/).
Henry Perlee Parker, ‘Is not this a brand plucked as from the burning’ (1839)
25 years ago I first became interested in portraits and prints of John Wesley, of which there are an amazing variety and – over 200 years after his death – people are still painting ‘original’ pictures of him. How do you make sense of this phenomenon? Why did artists paint him, what did they ‘see’? How did people view the images, was it with respect or ridicule?
Those are some of the elementary questions behind a critical study (‘Image and identity: John Wesley’ is the provisional title) due for publication early 2017. At our Faculty research conference on 16 June (theme ‘Power, the Individual & Society’) I’ll be giving a paper looking at this.
Probably no single picture was more influential than an 1839 scene painting by the Newcastle artist Henry Perlee [‘Smuggler’] Parker dramatically depicting Wesley’s rescue as an infant from the fire which destroyed his boyhood home. ‘Is not this a brand plucked as from the burning’ became a verbal and visual motif and mantra for Wesley’s life.
The paper will examine the genesis and production of this and other pictures, setting them in the context of the art of early Victorian Britain, and their role in articulating contemporary religious mores. It will explore not only the power of the image for society at large as well as a religious denomination, but how that enhanced the reputation of a single individual.
Peter Forsaith is Research Fellow of the OCMCH. He will be presenting (…)
Professor Jeremy Black (University of Exeter) – JOHN WESLEY AND HISTORY
Lincoln College, University of Oxford, 5pm, Wednesday 25 May 2016
This year’s annual John Wesley Lecture was delivered by Professor Jeremy Black on the subject of ‘John Wesley and History’. Professor Black is renowned for his engagement with historical subjects as disparate as military history, foreign policy, cartography, the development of newspapers, and the writing of history, and is the author of over 100 books on these topics and many more. The event was a great success, as Professor Black eruditely located John Wesley’s little-analysed Concise History of England (1776) within the historicist, moral and religious literary traditions of the eighteenth century.
The annual John Wesley Lecture is an event organised by the OCMCH, the Wesley Memorial Church and Lincoln College, Oxford, who also act as hosts. The lecture has in recent times been delivered by leading scholars of social and religious history, such as Professors J. Richard Watson and J. C. D. Clark.
James Smetham (1821-1889) is not well known as a painter and writer among the Pre-Raphaelites, although he knew Ruskin and was good friends with Rossetti. I knew little of him before having care of the the ‘Smetham Collection’ of some 60 paintings, etchings and writings from Smetham’s family which are held in the Centre.
In a paper I’ll be giving at the ‘Reading Art: Pre-Raphaelite Painting and Poetry’ conference in Birmingham I’ll be exploring how his Christian religion was the guiding force in his life, expressed in his art and writing. But unlike many of his Pre-Raphaelite contemporaries, who were strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement, Smetham was a Wesleyan Methodist, whose father and brother were both ministers. He taught at the ‘Wesleyan Normal Institution’ (later Westminster College) in London (whose archives are also held by the Centre) and in the Sunday School of his church in Stoke Newington.
Smetham was a prolific painter, yet even more abundant were the thousands of ‘squarings’ and ‘ventilations’ which he produced, miniature expressions of images and thoughts, on a wide range of personal and professional matters. These must be considered as part of his oeuvre, moreover they often express the links between his sometimes conflicting worlds.
This paper will explore some of the tensions between Smetham’s religious beliefs and life and the expectations of his art. In her otherwise comprehensive study, Susan Casteras barely considered this influence, which should be critical to an understanding of him. One of the central features of Methodism was Charles Wesley’s religious verses, many sung as hymns: how did these influence Smetham, both in his paintings and in his writing? How did he navigate the widening gulf between cultural trends and Victorian nonconformity?
Peter Forsaith is Research Fellow of the OCMCH. He will be presenting ‘James Smetham: Wesleyan Pre-Raphaelite’ at, Reading Art: Pre-Raphaelite Poetry and Painting, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Birmingham City University, May 27th – 28th 2016.
The OCMCH is pleased to welcome Dr Brett McInelly of Brigham Young University, Utah, USA, who joins the Centre as visiting research fellow.
Brett is associate professor in English and author of Textual Warfare and the Making of Methodism (Oxford University Press, 2015). He will be using his time at the Centre to further his research in Methodism in the eighteenth century.
Two recent collections of essays on George Whitefield have been published arising from the Centre’s conference on Whitefield at Pembroke College, Oxford in 2013.
George Whitefield Tercentenary Essays, edited by William Gibson and Thomas Smith, was published as a special issue of the Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture in 2015.
George Whitefield, Life Context and Legacy, edited by David Ceri Jones and George Hammond has been published by Oxford University Press, 2016.
A significant number of newly catalogued documents within the Westminster College Archives were created by the Westminster College Union Society between the 1950s and 1980s. The Union Society was formed at a College meeting of 18 February 1932, and the archives contain many items relating to both its central administration, and the records of individual societies formed by students of the College.
An item that stands out from the usual Union business is an official-looking document titled, Report of the Union Society concerning the “college elephant”. Written with the purported aim of bringing a pachyderm to Harcourt Hill, the writer claimed to have sought the opinion of the Zoological Society of London, who replied with the following.
You must learn to distinguish fantasy from fact. Certainly it is a marvellous idea to think of keeping an elephant in Oxford and you and your union could get a great deal of fun out of pursuing in your imaginations all the possible consequences, the disruption of the traffic, injuries to passers-by and fines from the police. In sober fact, however, it would be quite impracticable for you to keep an elephant
Not deterred by this discouraging response, the writer sought a second opinion from Bristol Zoo, but was again disappointed about the apparent costs of keeping an elephant. This was despite a plan to sell the manure, which might potentially have allowed the elephant to be ‘run at a profit’. Ultimately, the report concluded that ‘the Union Society has enough funds for the purchase of one elephant but this would entail the Union Society fees being raised to £5 for many years to come.’
Work is currently being undertaken to make the Westminster College Archives more accessible. Items within the collection may be viewed by appointment at OCMCH.
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