Sefton R.U.F.C

Our very first President

 

James Granville Legge

17th August 1861 – 17th January 1940

'Reproduced courtesy of the Legge Family Collection.'

 

 

 

 

Eldest Son of Professor James Legge and Hannah Mary Johnstone.

His father was the renowned missionary in Malacca & Hong Kong, translator, educationalist and

First Professor of Chinese at Oxford University - see *note below

Education

Family

Back row : Cecilia Mereio, Mary Dominica
Front row : Josephine (wife) Harry, JGL and Beatrice Pompilia

'Reproduced courtesy of the Legge Family Collection.'

 

 

Professor Mary Dominica - born 1905 (Died in Oxford)

(Professor of Medieval French, Edinburgh University)

Beatrice Pompilia - born 1906

(Teacher at Royal Holloway College, in Ecclesfield Green)

 

All unmarried without issue

 

Career

London

2nd Chief Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools

Account of visit to Birkdale Farm School

[Letters to DS MacColl 1915-39

Muirhead Bone was the first official war artist appointed after the outbreak of war in 1914. His drawings were collected in a series called The Western Front from which certain images were selected for an edition de luxe entitled War Drawings, with each plate signed by the artist.

]

 

 

 

Liverpool

Nursing Journal January 1915

At the annual meeting of the Garston and District Nursing Association, Liverpool, which receives a grant towards the work of its school nurse, Mr. J.G. Legge, Director of Education, said that there was a suggestion that too much was being done for children by the authorities, and that parents were being relieved, thus causing a loss of grit and fibre, which was the pride of our race. An immense work was being done by that Association, and the real point was in the way it was done. If relief was merely shovelled out it would weaken the moral fibre, but where relief was given under proper conditions it would strengthen rather than weaken.

 

 

Oxford 1925 – 1940 Banbury Road

Retirement

 

Other interests & achievements (selected)

London

Spent time in London with the ‘decadent’ arts set

i.e. Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley art editor of the Yellow Book quarterly periodical 1893-5 & others such as Augustus John.

 

WILDE, Oscar Autograph letter to Marian Willets ("Miss Willett"). Magdalen

College, Oxford, "Thursday", [1878].

Marian Fitzgerald Willets was stepdaughter of James Legge, the first

Professor of Chinese at Oxford. The letter to her was originally sent

with a photograph (no longer present) of a Burne-Jones watercolour

owned by Wilde called 'Hope'. Wilde comments: "In so many of Burne-

Jones' pictures we have merely the pagan worship of beauty: but in this

one I seem to see more humanity and sympathy than in all the others".

[Elliott Collection MS Wilde 1]

 

 

Liverpool

Oxford

'Repertory', the Playhouse’s magazine

OXFORD PLAYHOUSE
Group of 5 lively numbers of ‘Repertory’, the Playhouse’s magazine, edited by Thea Holme (née Johnston, b. 1908, actress and writer), with very interesting interviews with Yvonne Arnaud, Cathleen Nesbitt, Lilian Braithwaite, Louise Hampton, Elena Miramova, Willy Clarkson the wigmaker (“Vote for Clarkson ... always at the top of the Poll”), C.B. Cochran (“My most memorable first nights”, full of incidents back stage), and Theodore Komisarjevsky, all with their  signatures,   among the articles are two each on decor by John Counsell, and on Oscar Wilde at Magdalen, Oxford, and London by J.G. Legge, who knew him well, another has excerpts from Queen Victoria’s diary, each number 16 sides, 11” x 8½”, including pictorial covers and good advertisements, being the issues for 5th, 12th,19th October and 9th November 1931, and 30th January 1933
Among the topics are ‘London’s Greatest Blot’ by Yvonne Arnaud (the lack of a National Theatre, she explains why the talk about films replacing the theatre is “sheer nonsense”), censorship, smoking in the theatre, the role of Repertory and of the amateur, and the entertainment tax. Stringer Davis contributes a witty article on “How to become an actor ... How to remain an actor”. On Drama schools: “It is advisable to forget most that you have learnt, but you are generally the better for having learnt it”. Altogether a vivid evocation of the enthusiasm of the period.

 

 

Publications

The Thinking Hand

1914

Practical education in the elementary school

Rhyme & Revolution in Germany

1918

A study in German history, life, literature and
character 1813-1850

It is all a matter of taste, of course, but personally I don't
envy Mr. J.G. LEGGE his self-imposed task of convicting the Hun out
of his own mouth of--well, of being a Hun. Germans they were and
Germans they remain, and the author goes to great lengths, even to
the length of 572 pages, to show that their peculiar qualities date
back at least as far as 1813. His _Rhyme and Revolution in Germany_
(CONSTABLE) is not so much a history of the scrambling undignified
revolutionary movements culminating in the year 1848, as a collection
of contemporary comment thereon, in prose and verse. The prose is
generally bad; the verse is generally very bad; and one turns with
relief to the author's connecting links, wishing only at times that
he would not worry about proving his point quite so thoroughly. The
bombast and the bullying, the self-pity and the cruelty, and, most of
all, the instinctive claim, typical of Germany to-day, to prescribe
one law for themselves but something quite different for the rest
of the world, run through all these quotations, even the earliest.
But the particular value of this book at the moment is its reminder
that twice already has the House of Hohenzollern humbly pledged its
All-Highest word to give constitutional government, only to resume
"divine right" at the earliest convenient moment. Ruling Germany, and
as much else as possible, with a view to the glorification of one's
personal family and one's personal God, must be an exhausting labour,
and once again the head of the dynasty is afforded an opportunity
for a respite. It is a temptation which one feels sure he will find
himself strong enough to resist if occasion serves. History and Mr.
LEGGE suggest that he will be willing--even enthusiastic--to grovel
in the dust to assist that occasion. (Punch-or-the-London-Charivari-Vol-156-Jan-8)

Echoes From The Greek Anthology

1919

 

Education Act 1918

1919

 

The Millennium

1927

 

The Rising Tide

1929

An epic in education

Chanticleer

1935

A study of the French muse

The Last of Mrs Proudie

1938

A Barsetshire play

 

 

* note: For further details of James Legge’s early life and the work and influence of his father, James Legge, in Scotland, Malacaa, China and Oxford, please see Norman Girardot, "The Victorian Translation of China" and/or Dr Lauren Pfister, "The Whole Duty of Man".