Obituaries

( 90 ) HERBERT WHEATLEY KNOCKER, F.S.A. BY the death of Herbert Wheatley Knocker our Society has lost a noted figure and many of its members an old friend. Perhaps his most outstanding characteristic was his habit of giving of his very best to the task in hand, especiaUy if that task was for the good of someone else. Only those who, Hke the writer, met him in that capacity can realize how much time and thought Captain Knocker devoted to his men in the First World War. Only those who served with him on countless masonic, parochial, and, I beHeye, diocesan committees are fuUy aware of bis extreme conscientiousness. Of his professional work as a solicitor it is needless to speak except to emphasize that side of it which dealt with Manors. On these—their courts, their history and procedure—he was one of our very few authorities. He was Steward of many local manors and a great coUector of records of others. These he studied with great care and one can but regret that he pubHshed comparatively Httle compared with his great knowledge. It was by way of manorial courts and questions that he came to be an authority upon our local and county history, including also the history of Croydon where he Hved for a short time. His knowledge was always at the service of others and he was a moving spirit in the Manorial Society. But none of these things conveys the picture that some of us liked best. Herbert Knocker was surely happiest upon those few occasions when he was able to put into dramatic form his knowledge of past history. On one occasion he held a manor court, in the costume of EHzabethan days, for the deHght of the British Record Association. This required much rehearsal but was a great success and the device of a great teacher. Less elaborate but even more attractive were those lectures which were almost, or whoUy, acting. I remember one about the Rye road, the road by which fish was brought to the city of London. The exact detaUs have been forgotten but the lights were low upon the platform and in the hall. Knocker sat alone. I think he must have used some cloak or hat to heighten the Ulusion. He became the very traveUer on that road as he detaUed the incidents which happened in our own countryside. The audience was speUbound— a word which justly describes the effect he produced on these too rare occasions. Much else might be said of his work but I beHeve that he would rather be thus remembered than that one should speak of him as merely a learned man. He was very much more than that. G.W. OBITUARY 91 GEORGE S. ELGOOD, R.I. ELGOOD was born in 1851 in Leicester, and educated at private schools there, and at Bloxham. After studying at the Leicester Art School under Mr. Wilmot PUsbury, R.W.S., he went on to the CoUege of Art, South Kensington, where he worked in the Architectural Department and spent much of his spare time studying the treasures of the Museum. Being recaUed home on his father's death to take charge, for a time, of the famUy business, he resumed water-colour painting under Mr. PUsbury, and when freed from business adopted painting as his profession. He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colours (R.I.) in 1882, and of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters a few years later (R.O.I.). He painted in Italy and France as weU as in England, and eventuaUy became best known as one of the pioneer painters of formal gardens, though he stUl painted a variety of other subjects. He spent several weeks at Pompeii, and painted also at Taormina, Girgenti (Agrigentum), and other ancient and mediaeval sites in Italy and SicUy. He pubHshed two books, Some English Gardens (in collaboration with Miss Gertrude JekyU), and Italian Gardens, each Ulustrated by about fifty colour-reproductions from his pictures. Reproductions of many others have been used to iUustrate books by Dean Hole, Alfred Austin, and Maeterlinck ; and various books on gardens and gardening. In the course of his study of the Formal Garden he gathered a considerable library of books, old and new, on Gardens and Architecture, as weU as Archaeology and Heraldry, a number of which, according to his wishes have been given to the Hbraries of societies in which he was interested. In later years, when he did less painting, he developed a smaU formal garden at his home, Knockwood, an old timbered house near Tenterden. He also took a great interest in the work of the Kent and Leicestershire Archaeological Societies, but always with a strong leaning to the artistic side of their work. J.O.S.E. ANDREW GEORGE LITTLE, M.A., D.Litt., F.B.A., 1863-1946. A QUICKENED interest in British Franciscan history has been one of the most interesting developments in contemporary EngHsh historical scholarship. With that movement the name of one man wUl always be closely connected and deeply honoured, for Andrew George Little dedicated the whole of his working Hfe to St. Francis and his brethren. His name wUl Hve both in what he did himself and in what he inspired others to do. 92 OBITUARY His Hfe was the uneventful one of a scholar who knew exactly what he could do, and how best he could do it. He was the son of the Rev. Thomas Little, rector of Princes Risborough. Educated at Clifton and BaUiol CoUege, Oxford, he took a First in Modern History in 1886. During the next two years he was abroad studying palaeography at Dresden and Gottingen. Returning to England he worked on his first book, The Grey Friars in Oxford, which he published in 1892. In the foUowing year he married AHce Jane, daughter of WiUiam Hart of Fingrith HaU, Blackmore, Essex. His academic Hfe began with a lectureship at University CoUege, Cardiff, where he later became Professor of History, but in 1901 he was obHged to resign from his chair owing to his wife's iU health. Shortly afterwards he settled at Sevenoaks, which remained his home until the end of his Hfe. His next appointment was the inspiration of the late Professor Tout, who about 1902 was busy buUding up at Manchester that school of history which was to play so creative a part in modern EngHsh historical studies. Tout saw in Little the ideal teacher of palaeography for his post-graduate students, and from 1902 until 1928 Little was engaged upon some of the most interesting and fruitful teaching work of his career. Little's interest in Franciscan studies began to be apparent in his eariiest papers, and it deepened with the passing of the years. His desire to share his enthusiasm with others led him, in 1902, to form the British Society of Franciscan studies, and it was through this association that he did much of his own work, and extended his influence over other scholars. In 1907, the Sooiety became one for the pubUcation of original studies and documents conneoted with Franciscan history. The last of the Society's publications was issued in 1937. Through aU those years Little acted as Chairman of the Committee and general editor of pubhcations, and after the death of his friend Paul Sabatier in 1928 he succeeded him as President. Of the pubHcations which appeared during those years there was hardly one which did not contain something from his pen, either by way of an original contribution, or of coUaboration, or editing. His output of scholarly papers, editions of texts, studies, and documents, was notable. Many of them were written by a speciaUst for speciaHsts, but there were some which reached a wider public. It is unnecessary to Hst them aU, for when the work of the British Society of Franciscan Studies was completed in 1937, some of Little's coUeagues, admirers, and friends (and who could meet him and not wish to be one !) celebrated the event by presenting him with an address and a bibliography of his writings1, whUe in 1943 he himself made a coUection of those of his scattered 1 An Address presented to Andrew George Little, with a bibliography of his writings. Oxford Univ. Press. Privately printed, 1938. OBITUARY 93 papers which he thought best represented his work1. Of his books, those which won him distinction were The Grey Friars in Oxford (Publ. Oxford Hist. Soe. XXI. 1892); Roger Bacon Commemorative Essays (1914), which he edited and to which he contributed an introduction on Bacon's Hfe together with a bibhography: Studies in English Franciscan History (1917), being the Ford lectures which he dehvered at Oxford in 1916 : a Httle Guide to Franciscan Studies (1920) : Oxford Theology and Theologians, 1282-1302, in conjunction with F. Pelster (Oxford Hist. Soe, 1934): and Franciscan History and Legend in English Medieval Art (Brit. Soe. Franc. Studies, XIX. 1937). His chosen subject led him into Kent, and he contributed a paper on •" The Grey Friars of Canterbury " to Archceologia Cantiana (XXXIV. 1919), while amongst his articles on friaries in The Victoria County History was one on Kent Friaries (V.C.H. Kent, II. 177-208, 1926). Little was always ready to devote time and energy to the encouragement of historical learning, and he served on numerous learned societies such as the Royal Historical Society, of which he was a vice-president, the Canterbury and York Society, of which he was chairman, the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and as president of the Historical Association. To attempt a portrait of him would need a more skiUed hand than the writer of this note possesses. For his many friends it would of oourse be out of place, for they have their own memories to treasure. For those who did not know him it must be enough to say that no man, least of aU so lovable and sensitive a personaHty as that of Andrew Little, could devote many years to reflection on St. Francis without catching something of the humUity and the charm of that mysterious character. Of Little it might be said, in words once spoken about his friend Paul Sabatier : " I never met a historian who impressed me as he did—an ideaUst who was also an exact scholar, and also a lover of his kind. " C.H.W. 1 Franciscan Papers, Lists, and Documents, Manchester TJniv. Press, 1943.