Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey, taken from the first year photograph by Mason & Co of Cambridge, 1914 (archive reference: GCPH 10/9/1 pt)
Thanks to the generous bequest of Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey, who read Classics at Girton 1914-16, the College community has, since 1985, enjoyed the company of a series of visiting professionals, mainly creative artists, who would not normally work in academic settings.
This page contains a short tribute to Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey together with an introduction to the most recent incumbents of her visiting fellow commonership: composer, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, performer, Andrew Kershaw, and graphic artist Carol Adlam. Rescheduling due to Covid meant that, unusually, all three were in residence for at least part of the academic year 2021-2022. Together they give a vivid impression of the impact of Miss Harvey’s generous gift. Additionally, at the very bottom of this page there is a complete list of the 23 Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoners hosted by Girton College to date.
This short exhibition coincides with Girton’s annual Ceremony for the Commemoration of Benefactors, which this year profiles the different visiting positions available in the College, and thus features Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey’s bequest.
Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey was the daughter of Sidney Cummins Harvey, a Manchester cotton spinner and calico manufacturer, and Mary Jones whom he married in Bath in 1894. We know of two surviving children: Mary Amelia (named after her mother, Mary, and paternal grandmother, Amelia), and a brother, Sidney. Mary was born in Ashton-on-Mersey in Cheshire, on October 16th 1895, 26 years to the day after Girton first opened its doors. The family lived locally for a while, and Mary Amelia attended Wynthrop – a school for young ladies – for three years. When she was 9 years old, in mid-1905, her father died, in the same year as her grandfather. Shortly afterwards, she travelled south and for eight years attended Church House school, in Worthing.
Nothing is known of Mary Amelia’s journey to Girton. She came up in 1914 to study Classics, under the eagle-eye of soon-to-be Mistress Katharine Jex-Blake. Classics was a large and popular subject, with 21 students on site (from a total student body at Girton of 156). Academia may not have been Mary Amelia’s forte, however; she left after two years, her results unclassed after taking both the 1915 and 1916 inter-collegiate examinations (among her peers, six had third class marks, three were second class, and one secured a first).
It is, nevertheless, not entirely clear why she went down – she did so in the midst of war, at a time when most classicists in Cambridge only completed Part I (in the year she arrived only one Part II student is listed at Girton). On the one hand, we hear that despite being a keen gardener in later life, Miss Harvey insisted on using colloquial rather than Latin names for her plants, particularly her favourites: snapdragons and columbine. On the other hand, she apparently got on much better with the Vicar who knew Greek, than with a predecessor who did not. Perhaps it is not too bold to regard her as somehow bridging the creative and academic disciplines, much as her gift has enabled the College to do.
Mary Amelia may have had some contact with Girton after she left; on May 5th 1926, the College Council recorded its thanks to a 'Miss Harvey' for a three figure gift, but there were several alumnae with that surname at the time. In 1938, however, she returned to north-west England, settling in Heversham in Westmorland, not that far from Patterdale-on-Ullswater, where her late father once lived. It was a surprise when, after her death in Dale Lodge Nursing Home, Grasmere, in February 1984 aged 88, it emerged that had she left practically everything she owned – including the proceeds of a trust fund created by her father together with some Manchester ground rents (known as ‘chief rents’ and specific to that city) – to the College. The total bequest amounted to a generous five figure donation. The ground rents were sold later (in 1992 or 1993), and while there is no separate record of receipts, the total receivable annual income from the rents was less than £100 p.a. in 1990 when their estimated sale value was not much over three figures.
Miss Harvey never married but had several relatives, including her brother, so there must have been something about the mission of the College and her experience as a student that endured and which she wanted to support. It is not, however, clear what that was. Although her Will specified the creation of an endowment fund, and asked for it to be named after her, no restrictions were placed on its use.
What then, should it be used for? Usually in circumstances like this the College would try to use at least part of the bequest to support causes dear to the heart of the donor. In the absence of hard evidence, perhaps the best starting point is the suggestion that Miss Harvey may have been a somewhat Bohemian figure. She is the only student in her matriculation photo wearing a string of beads over her open-necked shirt, for example, and in later life she was known for her ‘distinctive’, or ‘avant garde’ dress, which included a hat similar to the one occupied by Dr. Zeuss’ cat, remarkable ear-rings, and colour-contrasting stockings. She was also drawn to the creative arts, being a pianist, dressmaker. milliner, and founder member of the South Westmorland Stage and Screen Society where she apparently gave a memorable performance as the Cook in Alice in Wonderland in 1951. She was popular if eccentric, had a kind heart, visited the sick, went to Church, and lunched regularly at the local hotel.
Advertisement for the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commonership in the Creative Arts or Music, which appeared in the Guardian, January 1985 (archive reference: GCAR 2/6/84 pt)
It is not known what factors Girton took into account in creating the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commonership, but it may be fitting that, thanks to the efforts of a committee steered by Honorary Fellow (then Vice-Mistress) Dame Gillian Beer, Miss Harvey’s bequest was used to fund a visiting position in the creative arts – music, creative writing, visual arts and theatre – to attract composers, performers, poets, photographers, authors and more. There have been 23 such visitors to date, their work flourishing in the setting of the College, whilst impacting in a variety of unexpected ways on both Girton and the University.
To take just one example: baroque violinist Margaret Faultless held the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commonership at Girton in 2010. She went on to become head of music performance in the University’s Music Faculty, and to play a key role in the creation of the University’s Centre for Music Performance – a new venture launched this month under the directorship of Girton Fellow, Simon Fairclough.
This example nearly sums up the idea of the visiting position: to provide time and financial support for an artist to live and work onsite, and engage with Girton’s community of scholars. Specifically, the incumbent was, and is, encouraged to offer ‘open house’ as well as regular ‘masterclasses’ to students, and to interact with Fellows. The initial arrangements are set out in the Council minutes for October, November and December 1984; the first position was advertised in the Guardian on Monday 7 July, 1985. On that occasion, the fellowship was limited to the fields of creative writing or music, and the first incumbent was composer Dr. Trevor Wishart, known for his interest in the technological intermediation of the human voice and other natural sounds.
Intriguingly, when the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey visiting fellowship was first conceived, the idea was to alternate a creative artist with a visiting industrialist (with a view to expanding this latter category to embrace other professional and public services). In the end, only four of the visiting positions have so far been of this type: three lawyers and one trade-unionist. Last year, however, the College revisited the concept of ‘industrial’ fellow, recognising the mutual benefits of better engaging with the business community. As a result, this term, Dr. Sabesan Sithamparanathan takes up the first of what will hopefully be a series of ‘Enterprise Fellowships’. They are three-year renewable appointments rather than visiting positions but the inspiration comes from the successful run of creative fellow commoners that Miss Harvey’s gift enabled.
This text is based partly on research completed by two previous visiting fellow commoners: Barrister Margaret Renaud (visiting in 1995); and author Michael Gray (visiting in 2005), whose notes, and acknowledgments to other colleagues and sources, including Sarah Gray and Peter Sparks, are held in the College archive. Thanks also to Girton College Archivist, Hannah Westall.
Please note, nevertheless, that rather little is currently known of Mary Amelia Cummins’ Harvey’s life. If you are able to add to, or wish to correct, any part of the record below, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please email archivist@girton.cam.ac.uk
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian (2019-20)
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, an alumna of Girton College, is described by the London Symphony Orchestra as “one of today’s leading emerging composers”. As an undergraduate, Cevanne was awarded The Sophia Adelaide Turle Scholarship for Music, prizes for research and composition (Turle; Gamble; Rima-Alamuddin; and Girton) and gained first-class honours. In 2020, she returned to Girton as the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner (MACHVFC). During her time as the MACHVFC, Cevanne released her first composition for symphony orchestra, ‘A Dancing Place (scherzo)’, as part of the Panufnik Legacies compilation, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by François-Xavier Roth.
Another project Cevanne undertook was her first ‘portrait album’, ‘Welcome Party’, for sinfonia, choir, and electronics, which was inspired by the acoustic properties of 575 Wandsworth Road, London. Tracks on the album include artists Ziazan (voice), Trish Clowes (saxophone), Tim Giles (drums), members of the London Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Jon Hargreaves), and Ausiàs Garrigós Morant (clarinets). The album’s closing track, ‘Lullaby Between Two’, featured the Girton College Chapel Choir directed by Gareth Wilson. The College’s international-prize-winning choir of some 25 members, has grown in prominence over the last ten years, due to its impressive musical standards, regular recordings, and ambitious, exciting touring schedule.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cevanne completed her second term as the MACHVFC in Easter Term 2022. In April 2022, she released the EP and booklet ‘Rites for Crossing Water’ as part of the electronic folk duo, Crewsdon & Cevanne. The pair wrote nineteen rituals for crossing water, marking nineteen ridges leading to the terminal Canal Basin, and created an audio-visual installation that was projected onto the backs of billboards and reflected in the canal. Cevanne also recorded a duet and aria on ‘The Nightingale of a Thousand Songs’ for the forthcoming album Antechamber Music II, which also includes performances from artists Ziazan, Tom Norris, Calum Gourlay, and Dave Hamblett and is due to be released in September 2022.
The time I have spent at Girton College has been a fabulous chance to build on my research and performance on historical brass musical instruments and work with the brass playing students and Fellows of the College.
Because some of my Visiting Fellowship was during the Covid-19 pandemic, recordings and live streams were a part of the experience. My ensemble Queen Victoria’s Consort recorded ‘A Christmas Carol’ narrated by Dickon Tyrrell, which was shared with all College members. We also made numerous videos to bring a collection of rare brass instruments to life, including introducing these instruments to students, with even the Mistress taking part in some.
A wonderful highlight of my time at Girton has been working with the Gir-Ten brass ensemble which at its height actually had fifteen members. Either playing with or directing the ensemble, we performed at many College events and dinners, and we also produced distanced recordings to share. At what was a very difficult time, it felt like the social side of brass playing and wider musical participation transcended the difficulties of Covid. These projects could not have happened without the tireless and peerless work and support from Jeremy West.
Another highlight was working in the smaller brass ensemble for College Guest Nights and the recording for BBC Radio 4, which was expertly recorded by Jeremy and the Chaplain with the brass and choir putting in wonderful performances that were truly professional on every level.
My overwhelming memories will always be of working within the most brilliant team of Girton Fellows, Members, Students and Staff.
I’m a writer and illustrator who specialises in research-driven sequential narrative art, particularly reportage art, graphic novels, and critical-creative hybrid literary forms. In my work I explore how the unique properties of drawing interact with text to create new forms, and how visual art can work in dialogue with literature, poetry, nonfiction, and music. My interests range from Russian literature to eighteenth century Madras, crime fiction, and literary adaptation, and I’ve worked as an academic, a translator, a writer, and artist. My career has taken me from Melbourne, Australia, to the archives of St Petersburg, to a master printmaker in South Africa, and back again to the UK, where I’ve worked with many exciting museums, galleries, archives, universities, publishers, and designers.
I’ve had two large projects underway while at Girton, as well as my usual freelance work, which has included teaching, exhibition displays for a museum and a libraries network, and a forthcoming graphic reportage piece for Delayed Gratification: the Slow Journalism Magazine.
The first major project I’ve been working on is a long graphic novel called The Russian Detective, commissioned by the Lost Detectives text and adaptation project at the University of St Andrews (PI: Dr Claire Whitehead), and to be published by Jonathan Cape in 2024. At the heart of The Russian Detective lies a nineteenth-century crime novel by a (long-forgotten) contemporary of Dostoevsky, wrapped in my own story of the fictional Charlotta Ivanovna - Russia’s first female detective. It’s also about visual technologies, illusions, and ways of seeing, and includes magic lanterns, Pepper’s Ghost, and even a paper peepshow/tunnel book, which (spoilers) shows the crucial murder scene. You can see a small video of the peepshow here, which I presented ‘live’ in October at my Girton research seminar presentation, ‘Illustration, Considered as One of the Fine Arts’.
The second major project I’ve been occupied with while at Girton has been to make tens of drawings and sketches of people and places around the college, in all sorts of mediums – from monoprints to pen and ink, charcoal, graphite, chalk, and photography. A few sample images are shown below, showing people and places around the college (nb. photo shows David Arvidsson-Shukur).
I initially thought that I might turn this into a single-edition art book – the ‘Girton Codex’ – but I was then fortunate to meet Dr James Wade, poet, and Fellow in English at Girton, who suggested a more ambitious and exciting art-poetry book collaboration. Our ‘Book of Girton’ (working title – watch this space) is conceived as a visual and textual meditation on Girton not just as a physical place inhabited by people, but as an idea that passes through time, transmitted through the work of the people of Girton College – whether Fellows, Staff, or Students. In this collaborative book, image and poem work in a non-hierarchical relationship, creating new associations out of their non-linear interactions with each other. James and I spoke about this at the End of 'A Great Campaign' Celebration event (see ‘Rogue’s Gallery: A Girton Miscellany’), and a sample video is available here, which sums up the dialogic nature of the interaction between text and image. We hope that ‘The Book of Girton’ will be published in 2023.
Other opportunities as a MACHVFC included being a judge for two competitions, and being asked to give a talk on ‘Story Time in Portraiture’ at the unveiling of the latest ‘People’s Portrait’.
Being a Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner has given me an abundance of creative opportunities, and I look forward to a long and productive association with the College and its members who have given me such a warm welcome.
Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoners (MACHVFC)
From the inaugural appointment of Dr Trevor Wishart in 1985 to that of Carol Adlam in 2021, the College has had 23 Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoners in total.
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, an alumna of Girton College, is described by the London Symphony Orchestra as “one of today’s leading emerging composers”. As an undergraduate, Cevanne was awarded The Sophia Adelaide Turle Scholarship for Music, prizes for research and composition (Turle; Gamble; Rima-Alamuddin; and Girton) and gained first-class honours. In 2020, she returned to Girton as the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner (MACHVFC). During her time as the MACHVFC, Cevanne released her first composition for symphony orchestra, ‘A Dancing Place (scherzo)’, as part of the Panufnik Legacies compilation, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by François-Xavier Roth.
The time I have spent at Girton College has been a fabulous chance to build on my research and performance on historical brass musical instruments and work with the brass playing students and Fellows of the College.
I’m a writer and illustrator who specialises in research-driven sequential narrative art, particularly reportage art, graphic novels, and critical-creative hybrid literary forms. In my work I explore how the unique properties of drawing interact with text to create new forms, and how visual art can work in dialogue with literature, poetry, nonfiction, and music. My interests range from Russian literature to eighteenth century Madras, crime fiction, and literary adaptation, and I’ve worked as an academic, a translator, a writer, and artist. My career has taken me from Melbourne, Australia, to the archives of St Petersburg, to a master printmaker in South Africa, and back again to the UK, where I’ve worked with many exciting museums, galleries, archives, universities, publishers, and designers.