Bernard Groom (1892-1976)

Bernard Groom graduated from University College, London, with a distinction and was awarded an Exhibition at Magdalen. He matriculated there in 1915, was awarded a 1^st in English Literature in 1917, and took his BA in 1918.[1] Groom was the only son of Frank Sutherland Groom (1860–1930), a corn merchant who lived in Islington at the time of the 1901 Census, and Emma Alice Bailhache (1860–1895). He had three older sisters and one younger, and was educated at the Stationer’s Company School.

At the time of the 1911 Census, i.e. before matriculating at University College, he worked as an insurance clerk and was either visiting or boarded with John Fred Addison Greene (1859–1931), a ship broker, and his wife, Jenny May Greene (1862–1940). From Michaelmas Term 1919 he taught English at Clifton College, Bristol, Sir Herbert Warren’s old school, but left to become Professor of English Literature at Montevideo University, Uruguay, from 1941 to 1948, and then at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, from 1948 to 1960, when he retired to Weston-super-Mare. Among other works, he published two volumes of poetry, the second of which, Poems of Two Continents (1965), he edited jointly with his sister Ida. His obituarist in The Times wrote: “A poet of fine sensibility in the great tradition of English letters, Bernard Groom felt himself out of sympathy with the more trendy, obscurantist modern style.”[2] In 1929 Sir Herbert Warren collected and edited Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, vol. XV[3], and chose Groom as one of his contributors writing on ‘Some Kinds of Poetic Diction’.

Professor Bernard Groom, by Delmar Harmood Banner (1896–1983 (Courtesy of Magdalen College)

The portrait of Groom in Magdalen is by Groom’s Magdalen contemporary Delmar Banner (1896–1983) who, like Groom, did not serve in the war, although in his case this was because he was not fit.[4]

In March 1916, Groom appeared before the Oxford Tribunal claiming absolute exemption from military service. His appearance was reported in the Oxford Chronicle of 10 March 1916:[5]

APPLICATION FOR CASE TO BE TAKEN IN CAMERA

Bernard Groom (23), Exhibitioner of Magdalen College, lecturer on literature to the London County Council and examiner for clerkships to the Great Northern Railway, claimed absolute exemption on religious and moral grounds.

The applicant asked for his case to be heard in private.

The Town Clerk said under the regulations under which the Tribunal was formed it was laid down that all applicants to the local Tribunal should be heard in public unless the Tribunal, in any case – due regards being given to the interests of the party and any other persons concerned in the application – considered the application or any part thereof, should be heard in private. In the applicant’s letter there was only [one] reason (domestic grounds) he wanted dealt with in private, and the other reasons would be dealt with in public.

The applicant said he believed it was possible that war need no longer be an instrument for the settlement of disputes. He believed that it could only be brought about by people refusing to take part in the war.

The Tribunal retired to consider the point the applicant wished taken in private and on their return the Mayor said there would be conditional exemption on domestic grounds for three months.

But as Groom seems not to have served, the above exemption may have been renewed.

Groom’s father remarried in 1902 and had four children with his second wife, Dorothy Alma Stanley Smith (1879–1965), with whom he emigrated to Australia – sometime after the birth of their third child, Dorothy Esther Phoebe (1909–36), but before the 1911 Census – where Frank Groom became a commission agent and produce broker in South Perth. Groom’s sisters stayed, however, with their grandmother Emma Bailhache (née Meacher) (1835–1914), the widow of Reverend Clement Bailhache (1830–78), Secretary of the Baptist Union and much involved in Baptist Missionary work[6], and it seems likely that she was responsible for them after their father had emigrated and perhaps even after his second marriage. Emma was steeped in the Baptist tradition and her son the High Court judge Sir Clement Meacher Bailhache (1856–1924) maintained his Baptist faith throughout his life and was a committed teetotaller. So this religious background may account for Bernard Groom’s claim for absolute exemption on religious and moral grounds.

Groom’s “domestic reason” for confidentiality is less easy to work out. His grandmother died in 1914 and he may have felt responsible for his four sisters, even although by the time of the 1911 Census the three older sisters all had jobs: Doris Meacher (1886–1973) working in an insurance office, Alice Kathleen (1888–1968) in a council school and Ida (1890–1983) with Cook’s Tourist Office, while Winifred Sutherland (b. 1895, died in Australia) was still at school. Nevertheless, his closeness to at least two of his sisters may have had something to do with it since Doris and Ida, both unmarried, died, like Bernard, in Weston-super-Mare. Ida accompanied her brother to Montevideo and then to Hamilton, Canada, where she founded the Tower Poetry Society.[7] Alice became a missionary to India but joined her brother and sisters in Weston-super-Mare, where she died. Winifred may have joined her father in Australia, as she got married there in 1928. But although being the breadwinner for a large family was a common reason for requesting exemption, it would not have been a reason for Bernard to ask for his case to be heard in private.

—

[1] The Magdalen College Record (1922), p. 91.

[2] [S.S.], ‘Prof Bernard Groom’ [obituary], The Times, no. 59,367 (11 April 1975), p. 16.

[3] Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, vol. XV, collected by Sir Herbert Warren (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929)

[4] J. Brett Langstaff, Oxford – 1914 (New York: Vantage Press, 1965), p. 61.

[5] [Anon.], ‘Exhibitioner of Magdalen’, The Oxford Chronicle, no. 4,202 (10 March 1916), p. 9.

[6] See obituary in The Banner of Truth, III (1879), no. 6, pp. 89–90.

[7] ‘Ida Sutherland Groom’, Footprints through Time with Archivist Peter Bowman:    http://towerpoetry.ca/poetryplus/archives-2.html (accessed 29 March 2022).