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David Quinn and Liverpool
Dr D. J. Dutton
It was at the age of forty-eight and with the experience of thirteen years as professor of history at University College, Swansea that David Quinn became the fifth occupant of the Andrew Geddes and John Rankin Chair of Modern History at the University of Liverpool in 1957. His predecessor, Mark Thomson, had died in post the previous year, so Quinn took over after a brief interregnum. It was not an easy inheritance. At Liverpool, as at many other Universities, distinct chronological divisions had become entrenched in the discipline through the organizational structure of the Faculty and the separate departments of Medieval and Modern History viewed one another with wary suspicion. In fact, in the pre-Quinn era the respective heads of modern and medieval history, Thomson and Geoffrey Barraclough, were not even on speaking terms. In their complete lack of mutual regard these two professors were maintaining a long-standing Liverpool tradition that went back to the days of Ramsay Muir, the first holder of the Geddes and Rankin chair in the years before the First World War. In his unfinished memoirs Muir recounts his stormy relationship with the personally formidable but academically undistinguished John Macdonald Mackay, the concurrent holder of the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History. That particular animosity probably went back to the time when Mackay tried to deny the then final-year undergraduate Muir his deserved first-class honours degree and was only thwarted when the external examiner lay on his back and proceeded to kick his legs into the air until Muir received his just deserts. (A meticulous scholar such as David Quinn would expect this statement to be referenced: G. S. Veitch, ‘Liverpool Memories: the University’ in S. Hodgson (ed), Ramsay Muir: An Autobiography and Some Essays, London, 1943, p. 167.) The Muir-Mackay power struggle also resulted in Liverpool’s failure to re-appoint the future Regius Professor, Maurice Powicke, to a humble temporary lectureship. Against this background the studied silence of Thomson and Barraclough was no doubt a definite improvement.
But David Quinn’s arrival offered the prospects of a new beginning, not least because Barraclough also moved on to fresh pastures at around this time, to be replaced as Professor of Medieval History by the extraordinarily youthful Christopher Brooke. David’s relaxed style, after the authoritarian rule of his predecessor, brought the traditional feud between the heads of medieval and modern history to a welcome end. The change was symbolized by the physical transfer of the two departments to the elegant Georgian terraces of Abercromby Square. This allowed for closer personal contact and gradually a genuine School of History, combining but not fusing the two departments, emerged. Brooke stayed at Liverpool until 1967 when David’s medieval partner became Alec Myers, a man more of his own age. Among his own staff David inherited John Rowe, a relaxed Cornishman with an interest in tin-mining and American and Imperial history, Tony Ryan, a naval specialist well known within the Hakluyt Society, and the formidable Irene Collins, historian of Napoleonic France. Over the next two decades, a period which coincided of course with a great expansion in student numbers, David Quinn was able to build up Modern History into a sizeable department of about fifteen members. Philip Bell was his first appointment in 1957 and I was the last before his retirement in 1976. Neither of us, though was typical. The distinct shape which David gave to the department was its strong emphasis on non-European history. By the time he retired, the department had expertise in African history, Latin American history and South East Asian history as well as building upon his own interests in North American and Irish history. At the same time, David was well suited to co-operate with government demands for more students, since he never expected all applicants to be high flyers and was content if he judged them to be ‘educable’, his word, to a useful standard. With many new courses being added to available options, particularly in overseas history, joint degrees were negotiated with the departments of politics, economics, economic history, English and French, although not all of these innovations survived. In the early 1970s the department launched its own degree, the standard history degree being shared with the Department of Medieval History, and a distinguishing feature of the new Modern History degree was its emphasis on non-European courses of study and its insistence (gosh, it seems a long time ago now) upon students being able to read history in foreign languages.
David was not of the current breed of politician-academics. By this I mean that he did not see his scholarship as a route to power within the University, a desire to join those bureaucrats and administrators who claim, with ever diminishing credibility, to manage our institutions to the benefit of the rest of us. That is not to say, however, that he lacked political skills. David was keen to be democratic but he also had clear ideas as to how he wanted Modern History to develop and he would never give up trying to persuade colleagues to support his plans. His efforts were generally good-humoured, but there were occasional flashes of native Irish temper if he was tried too far. These, however, would pass just as quickly as they had arisen. David was also capable of a bit of back-stairs diplomacy, of which, for example, I was a fortunate beneficiary when, after one year in post, the bureaucrats sought to abolish my position on grounds of economy. He took a puckish delight in pretending to be devious: a Faculty sub-dean once described him as the only man whose answers to a questionnaire were more obscure than the question themselves.
But it was his scholarship in American history which was at the forefront of David’s concerns while in Liverpool. Colleagues soon found that they were well received by any American historian they chanced to meet, if only because they were from Liverpool and therefore ‘must know David Quinn’. He visited the States frequently, but always remained quintessentially Irish. He carried his immense learning lightly and always gave a slightly disorganized, even dishevelled, appearance. His study looked like a cross between a rather untidy second-hand bookshop and a faded boudoir with, I remember, an ancient chaise-longue on which callers were invited to join him if David needed to impart a particularly delicate or confidential piece of information. It was in that position that I was told that the University couldn’t afford to keep me. The same impression was created by the house which David and his wife Alison bought in the secluded private estate of Cressington Park near the Mersey, a vast, rambling pile which gave plenty of scope for David to store his ever-growing collection of books and papers. Alison, an accomplished scholar and indexer in her own right, was an essential component of David’s academic career and a frequent visitor to the department, not least because she acted as his chauffeuse. Some of us found her diminutive appearance behind the wheel of a huge American Cadillac a little disconcerting, but it was one of the many ways in which she made David’s life run more smoothly.
David Quinn retired from his post at Liverpool aged sixty-seven in 1976, after nineteen years in the Geddes and Rankin chair, to be succeeded by Peter Hennock. It did not, of course, mean the end of his teaching career. He held part-time appointments in America until his mid-70s. Still less did it mark the end of his scholarly output. But, as far as Liverpool was concerned, David now took on for the next quarter-century that much feared role of Emeritus Professor. As each chair-holder moves towards this elevated status, apprehension is voiced about possible unwanted interference, back-seat driving and sniping from the wings. In most cases, I suspect, such fears are unwarranted and they certainly were in David’s case. He moved gracefully and unobtrusively into his new position. We saw more of him once his American semesters came to an end and he became permanently domiciled in Liverpool. He visited the department regularly, took a friendly but not obtrusive interest in its affairs, slipped quietly into the tiny office he shared with his good friend and fellow Emeritus Professor, Paul Hair, and was a delightful conversationalist over lunch or coffee. He took satisfaction in the foundation of the Institute of Irish Studies, appropriately in Liverpool, the most Irish of British cities, under the direction of Patrick Buckland whom David had appointed to the Department of Modern History some years before. It was a sign of the affection in which he was held that the Department commissioned a portrait of him to hang in its Common Room and presented him with a collection of essays to mark his eighty-fifth birthday, to add to the Festschrift which had accompanied his retirement. In his latter years his eyesight gave him trouble but, true to his principles, he insisted on taking his place in a fairly lengthy NHS queue for treatment of cataracts. I remember seeing him soon after his operation, now in his late 80s, visibly rejuvenated - why - because, as he said, he could work again. That work went on apace, his last publication appearing when he had passed the age of ninety. David Quinn left an indelible mark upon the study of history at the University of Liverpool and it has been my privilege to pay, however inadequately, this tribute. |
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