A Visit By An American Soldier (Professor) During Wwii

A Memory of Marlborough.

My uncle Joe Wolff was an American Soldier during WWII and spent the summer of 1942 stationed in various places in Wiltshire including Tottenham House. Although he was a private he was very well educated with a degree in History and English. He was invited to visit the college during his stay and wrote fairly extensively about it. I will enclose some of his observations from his journal here:

(This section was from a letter he wrote to his parents back in the States) "Yesterday was quite exciting for me. I made the excursion into our largest town and went through a rather famous boy’s school there. I met my friend Mr. Penrose, who turned out to be an English army officer and I was quite stunned at the rank as it hadn’t been suggested before. Here officers and men, when at home, can wear civilian dress and that of course is how he was dressed when I met him before. We journeyed down the street being saluted by everyone and finally came to a pub called The Sun.

Then we went over to the school. We went around the grounds, saw various buildings, the oldest a rather historical thing, once the home of the Seymour’s, built in 1702. There is a prehistoric mound on the campus which is claimed to be the burial place of Merlin, who you remember, was in King Arthur’s court. The chapel is rather impressive, in spite of it being 19th century gothic. It’s decorated by an “old boy” William Morris who did things like the Morris chairs and wallpapers. He was very much the art leader of the Victorian era.

I had glimpses of a dorm life, which is very Spartan – no privacy-a bed, a few pegs for clothing etc. Each boy has a small wooden box which is for his jams, things for tea and in one room we went to the lads were scattered around at old knocked about desks, long oak affairs, busily spreading thick slices of bread with their store of goodies."
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(This section was from his personal journal)
"My day at Marlborough College was very entertaining. Mr. Penrose dropped me a note saying he would gather some of the Masters for luncheon if I would care to come in on a given day. I took Tony Perry, and together we took the day off and went into Marlborough. We played around a bit, shopped and tea’d and then met Mr. Penrose now resplendent in a Lt.’s uniform. He, being a Quaker, took us down to a small tavern called The Sun for luncheon. The Innkeeper was used to having the college Masters drop in for luncheon, but not such large parties. Even though Mr. Penrose had forewarned him, he was rather unhappy about our numbers. In fact, he became so confused he cut more bread and cheese and fixed more salads, drew more beer than necessary and Mr. Penrose who waited on us took it all rather than point out the mistake, so we ate the cheese and bread, the lettuce and tomatoes, and drank the half and half in great quantities.
We walked over to the college grounds. I saw “C. House” the old Seymour mansion which was built by Indigo Jones’ son. In its day it had been a “blue stocking” meeting place. It was famous as a place where William Pitt stopped for weeks, holding up Parliament. It later became a college dormitory. Then we saw the castle mound. In past times a royal castle stood on the grounds and the mound (a large artificial pile) was said to be the burial place of Merlin, from whom the town may have gotten its name. Next, we saw the science rooms and labs, the print shops, etc.
I saw the boys’ dorm which was a long room of sagging beds and wash basins with tumbled bed clothing and scattered personal belongings. It was a bare, Spartan, existence the boys lived. We stopped in to see the boys at tea. There was a long dining room with pictures of the former head and boys. They were waiting on themselves due to the war. We then went to a room of carved desks where the younger gathered to toast their bread and spread their jam and make their tea. They all have little trunk like boxes which contain their jams and goodies. They are all carefully initialed and locked and stored in a definite place.
Gough’s rooms were book laden, and overflowed with the bits gleaned from his continual travels. He made tea on a small burner. We had bread and jam and a bit of cake and talked about books and classes. He was very kind to me, and offered to turn his classes over to me for a day if I wanted to. I was tempted to prepare a lecture on Lord Byron, but time went on and it seemed best to forget it."
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My husband and I are visiting the area from Seattle in May ('12) and we hope to retrace some of the places that Joe visited. We would welcome any suggestions of ways to see the places that he mentioned.