Biographies

G.D.J. Pernel Strachey (1876-1951)

Pernel Strachey, an old Newnham student herself, returned to the College after being an assistant lecturer at Royal Holloway College. Eventually she became a Tutor and finally, in 1923, by the unanimous vote of the Fellows, its Principal, an office she adorned with particular and individual distinction until 1941. Her published work was sparse, confined to editions of Anglo-Norman texts for the C.U.P, but her teaching of French literature was greatly admired and valued by students for its fastidious intensity.

As a member of the large and distinguished Strachey family (Lytton was a younger brother), she shared its characteristically lively intellectual interests, wit and argumentative engagement with ideas. In manner she appeared shy and withdrawn (described indeed by Virginia Woolf as a delicately stepping fawn in a wood), but this veiled both kindness and a humorous regard for life’s problems. Her tall thin figure was typically Strachey (she was always known as the Streak), adorned on appropriate occasions by magnificent brocade coats, as may be seen in Henry Lamb’s portrait, which also shows her quizzical tilt of head and bird-like pose. A favourite of Virginia Woolf’s, it is noticeable that the latter’s letters to her show a teasing deference.

As Principal, Pernel Strachey showed an acute ability, deceptively hidden, for management, fund-raising and an awareness of every aspect of college life. Suprisingly for one from a Bloomsbury background she maintained strict ideas about student behaviour and was described by many as too conservative. It was some years into her office that chaperonage was gradually dropped; her views on theatre attendance seem remarkably old-fashioned (only the dress circle and with another student and possibly a named man or two). But she acceded to the Boat Club’s request to be allowed to wear shorts on the river instead of voluminous skirts. At Council meetings she seems always to have maintained an amused but restraining hand.

Pernel Strachey was a witty and fluent speaker and debater. She possessed the easy but polished politeness of an earlier and more formal era which reflected the upper class moeurs of her family – and which was much missed by many when she left.

Her remoteness was as characteristic of her as it had been of Mrs Sidgwick. In each it lent distinction to the figure presented to the world and was also as illusory. It concealed determination to allow the full development of women’s minds and ambitions. It also concealed their capacity for not taking themselves too seriously. Pernel Strachey once told a students’ coffee party that she viewed the prospect of Queen Mary spending a night in the Pfeiffer (Principal’s) flat as daunting because they might be discovered, before the evening was out, hobnobbing with each other.

The present writer remembers that on the morning after war was declared in 1939, Miss Strachey took great trouble to give her advice, selfishly sought, when her thoughts must have been elsewhere.

Pernel Strachey’s reign can be regarded as a bridge between the old founding concepts of a women’s college and its emergence, particularly with the granting of degrees to women in 1948, as an integral part of the University.

Helen Fowler, 2005

To read further

• Barbara Caine, Bombay to Bloomsbury. A biography of the Strachey Family (Oxford 2005)