A journey through Aboriginal Australia
18.02.1884. From B. S. (Exeter College Oxford) to H. G. H. G. ‘s coming visit and the problems of travel by rail. B. S. has been to a second lecture by Tylor. He does not agree with all Tylor’s views on the sequence of stone, bronze and iron in primitive culture. This may be due in part to “being prejudiced beforehand”.
Oxford in the 1880s: Letters from Baldwin Spencer to his friend Howard Goulty over a period of 20 years between 1880 – 1900. They had studied together at Owens College, Manchester.
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[watermark] OXFORD UNION SOCIETY
Feb. 18.84.
Dear Howard,
I was sorry to get your card saying you were not coming on Saturday: it is I suppose a chancery case & such (judging from Bleak House principally) are liable to be put off in most inexplicable ways.
However I shall be glad to see you for a few hours when you do come & only wish that I could offer you a bed but as there is not one
I cannot very well.
Unfortunately trains are considerably awkward between here & Cambridge the last leaves at 4.30 & gets there at 8.15 : this of course stops at every mortal station & the ride would be really exciting. It seems to be the usual time for trains to take moreover. What will you do? In the first place it gives you very little time indeed here: lunch could be ready in my rooms as soon as you got in but that would only give us about 1½ hrs after it was over. Could you not possibly come up earlier in the morning or is there no earlier train. On the L.& N.W. I see that one leaves A.E. at 7.49 & gets to Oxford at 1.35. It is far more convenient to come G L & N.W. if there is a decent train as this is the station from wh. you will have to go to Cambridge & so any luggage can be left there.
I have just come from another of Tylor’s lectures on primitive culture: he has been dealing with the question of order of sequence of stone bronze & iron & has himself arrived at the opinion that in a great many cases at all events the bronze did not
precede the iron in the way in which it is ordinarily supposed to have done: however I cant say that I quite see the face of his arguments very clearly which may be due in part to being prejudiced beforehand.
As you say we cannot always have exactly what we want: you certainly seem very philosophically to have come to the conclusion that such is best though it sounded rather like ‘sour-grapes’. I should very much have liked to have run over to Bristol where Lillie is staying just now but have in what I consider a most praiseworthy way not done so. It is much the best not to break into the term for it is quite short enough as it is. Saturday was the half-way day. In haste
W.B.S.
Rights: Pitt Rivers Museum
