16 February 2021

Edward Woods of Lichfield,
the sculptor Jacob Epstein,
the Pope and a milk float

Sir Jacob Epstein’s sculpture in bronze of Edward Sydney Woods, Bishop of Lichfield, in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Lichfield is now known as the City of Sculpture, thanks to the sculptor Peter Walker. The City of Sculpture is a physical and new media trail of artworks that has engaged community projects run by The Sculpture and Art Foundation CIC.

The guide produced by Lichfield City Council provides a walking trail that is divided into six sections:

1, Lichfield Cathedral

2, Beacon Park and the Museum Gardens

3, Bird Street, including the War Memorial and the Samuel Johnson Mosaic by John Myatt (1976)

4, Saint John Street and the Friary, including Simon Manby’s ‘Noah and the Dove’ in the courtyard of Saint John’s Hospital, and ‘The Reading Girl’ by Giovanni Mario Benzoni, now in Saint Mary’s.

5, The Market Square (Johnson and Boswell)

6, Tamworth Street

The works in Lichfield Cathedral listed on this guide include the statues on the West Front; the Lichfield Angel; the ‘Sleeping Children’ by Sir Francis Chantry; Bishop Edward Sydney Woods, a sculpture in bronze by Jacob Epstein in 1958; artefacts from the Staffordshire Hoard; the High Altar by Sir George Gilbert Scott; and the Herkenrode Glass.

Sir Jacob Epstein was a pioneer of modern sculpture, and his bronze statues of Saint Michael and the Devil is on the wall of Coventry Cathedral leaves a lasting impression. When Basil Spence commissioned Jacob Epstein, some members of the rebuilding committee objected. They said some of his earlier works were controversial. Although Coventry was at the centre of post-war reconciliation, some even objected, saying Epstein was a Jew. To this, Spence retorted: ‘So was Jesus Christ.’

Other cathedrals with works by Jacob Epstein include Llandaff Cathedral with his ‘Christ in Majesty.’

For a long time, Lichfield Cathedral has displayed Sir Jacob Epstein’s sculpture of Edward Sydney Woods, Bishop of Lichfield (1937-1953), which was completed in 1958, five years after the bishop’s death.

Edward Sydney Woods (1877-1953) was the 94th Bishop of Lichfield. He was born on 1 November 1877, the son of the Revd Frank Woods, and his mother, Alice Fry, was a granddaughter of the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

Edward Woods was a tall man, over 6 ft high, with an engaging and easy-going manner. He was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was ordained priest in 1902.

High Leigh, once the home of the family of Clemence Barclay, who married Edward Wood, future Bishop of Lichfield, in 1903 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A year after his ordination, he married Clemence Barclay in 1903. Her father, Robert Barclay, lived at High Leigh, Hoddesdon, now a well-known conference centre in Hertfordshire and regularly the venue for the annual conference of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). She was a descendant of the abolitionist and social reformer Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton.

Robert Barclay was descended from a well-known Quaker banking family. He bought High Leigh in 1871, and to this day the walls of High Leigh are lined with Victorian photographs of the Barclay family and their staff; a stained-glass window in the original parts of the house shows the impaled Barclay and Buxton coats-of-arms with a bishop’s mitre as one of the two crests.

Clemence Woods’s brother, Joseph Gurney Barclay, was a missionary in Japan with the Church Mission Society (CMS) when his wife Gillian died in Kobe in 1909. Their son, Sir Roderick Barclay (1909-1996), was born in Kobe and was later the British Ambassador to Denmark (1956-1960) and Belgium (1963-1969).

Edward Woods was the chaplain, a lecturer and then Vice Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, until World War I, which he spent at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. After World War I, he as the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he formed a life-long friendship with Harold Abrahams, the Olympic athlete who features in the movie Chariots of Fire.

Woods moved from Cambridge to Croydon, where he was vicar, rural dean, archdeacon and then the second suffragan Bishop of Croydon.

He was appointed the Bishop of Lichfield in 1937, and it is said that while he was Bishop of Lichfield every member of the royal family at the time visited the Cathedral Close as his guest.

The story is told that Bishop Woods had the distinction of being one of two survivors of a German air raid by hiding under a dining table with Ann Charteris, the future wife of Ian Fleming.

But another, more important story, from an ecumenical perspective, is told by Jono Oates in his A—Z of Lichfield, Places, People, History (Amberley, 2019). Bishop Woods was visiting British troops in war-time Italy in 1944. While he was in Rome, he visited the Vatican and had an audience with Pope Pius XII. This was long before meetings between Popes and the Archbishops of Canterbury became a regular fixture, and it is believed to be the first private meeting between a Pope and an Anglican bishop.

The impaled Barclay and Buxton coats-of-arms with an episcopal mitre at High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Woods was a prolific author and a fine orator, and during the 1940s he was a regular contributor to the BBC’s religious programmes. After World War II, as Bishop of Lichfield, he was also the Lord High Almoner from 1946 to 1953.

In his book, Jono Oates also tells the amusing story of how Bishop Woods arrived on a milk float to open an art exhibition in Stafford. The intention was that a driver would drop him and return afterwards to take him back to Lichfield. However, Woods told the driver to drop him at the Art School before realising he had got the wrong location. To avoid being late, the bishop thumbed a lift from the first vehicle that stopped and arrived on a milk float in his mitre and cope, carrying his crozier.

Bishop Woods died on 11 January 1953. His children included Frank Woods (1907-1992), Archbishop of Melbourne, who was born in Davos, Switzerland; Samuel Woods (1910-2001), Archdeacon of Rangiora in New Zealand; Robin Woods (1914-1997), Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Worcester, who was born in Lausanne, Switzerland; the photographer Janet Stone (1912-1998); and Josephine Priscilla, who married the Revd John d’Ewes Evelyn Firth in Lichfield Cathedral in 1939.

His sculpture by Jacob Epstein was unveiled by the Queen Mother in Lichfield Cathedral in 1989.

Sir Jacob Epstein’s ‘Christ in Majesty’ in Llandaff Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This evening: Thomas Wood, Dean and and Bishop of Lichfield, who was ‘mean and avaricious’

Every time a surname is
mispronounced, it signals
disrespect or even racism

Respecting the origins of a surname challenges and rejects ‘racial microaggression’

Patrick Comerford

During the impeachment trial in the US Senate last week, members of Trump’s legal team fumbled a number of words and with purpose and intention mispronounced the Vice-President’s name.

At one point, Michael Van der Veen confused ‘resurrection’ with ‘insurrection,’ called the Massachusetts Democrat Ayanna Pressley ‘Anya,’ mispronounced Vice-President Kamala Harris’s first name, and referred to Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, as ‘Ben Roeffensberger,’ and ‘Ben Rothenberg’ and even ‘Ben Roethlisberger.’

David Perdue spent three years in the Senate with Kamala Harris, and they worked together on the Budget Committee. But, during the election campaign, the Republican from Georgia stood in front of a cheering and jeering crowd of Trump supporters and called her ‘Ka-mal-a, Comma-la, Ka-Mala-mala-mala.’

He was saying not that he did not know how to pronounce her name, but that it does not matter. These were intentional, calculated acts of disrespect, with thinly disguised undertones of racism.

Mocking the Vice-President’s first name — which means ‘lotus’ in Sanskrit — has become prevalent among Republicans. Trump called her ‘Comma-la’ and ‘Ka-MAL-a’ at rallies too.

When Perdue was challenged, he deflected from the problem and instead responded, ‘A lot of Democrats will do or say anything right now to hide their radical, socialist agenda.’

When a guest corrected Tucker Carlson of Fox News on how he pronounced her name, he seemed affronted at the suggestion that he was showings disrespect. After a few more attempts, he brushed it aside with a ‘whatever.’

The frequent mispronunciations of her name, and the names of other candidates, is not simply a matter of confusion. It is often intended to create the image they are different, foreign or in some way un-American.

Nor is it coincidental. It is not only planned, but Trump encouraged his supporters and his crowds to do the same, are playing to the ignorance, the racism, and the xenophobia of his support base. Yet, this same president refused to countenance anyone changing the name of racist Confederate generals and slaveholders being removed from US military bases. And I cannot remember anyone calling Donald John Trump ‘Ronald McTrump.’

The Washington Democrat Pramila Jayapal had her name mispronounced regularly by her Republican opponent, Craig Keller, who insisted on calling her ‘Jail-a-pal,’ even after she asked him to correct himself.

Vice-President Harris was born in the US, the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother. But some Republicans continue to suggest — as they did with former President Barack Obama — that her background means she cannot serve as president.

Some politicians Anglicise their names in order to avoid the issue. In South Carolina, Nikki Haley, who was born Nimrata Randhawa, told the Charlotte Observer she shortened her name because it ‘wouldn’t fit on a yard sign.’

President Obama was sometimes the subject of mockery because of his name. A Republican congress member forwarded an email referring to his wife as ‘Mrs YoMama.’ At rallies, Trump has referred to ‘Barack Hussein Obama,’ giving extra emphasis to ‘Hussein.’

In a similar way, throughout the Senate trial last week and before that during the election campaign, Trump and his Republicans insisted on referring to the ‘Democrat Party’ instead of the Democratic Party, robbing the party of its Democratic credentials and credibility.

Jayapal was ‘so peeved’ by Perdue’s mispronunciations that she hosted an Instagram live discussion on the importance of correctly saying other people’s names.

The hashtag #MyNameIs began spreading on Twitter as people tweeted their own names along with their meanings and, in some cases, their experiences with those who did not try to learn them.

The hashtag was started by Parag Mehta, former chief of staff to the US surgeon general, and his husband, Vaibhav Jain. Stories were shared by Pramila Jayapal, Hiral Tipirneni, who is Indian American, retired figure skater Michelle Kwan, actor Patton Oswalt and Kamala Harris’s sister Maya and niece Meena.

The problem is not limited to politics. Rita Kohli, an education professor at the University of California at Riverside, says the wilful mispronunciation of someone’s name, especially one reflecting their cultural background, qualifies as a ‘racial microaggression.’ She speaks of a ‘deprofessionalisation and othering.’

Making an effort to learn somebody’s name shows respect. Refusing to pronounce it properly when you know how to is not mere sarcasm and cheap humour; it is similar to schoolyard bullying and an act of passive aggression that seeks to rob away someone of than an essential part of their self-image and identity. It demeans their background and heritage.

Have you noticed that Gerry Adams constantly peppered his speeches in the Dail with Irish words and phrases that he enunciated with over-emphasis? Yet, it seems, he could never bring himself to properly pronounced the names of Fianna Fail or Fine Gael: Fail always seemed to rhyme with ‘fail’ as in ‘failure’ and Fine always seemed to rhyme with ‘wine.’

I had a line manager who for four years insisted on misplacing the emphasis on the syllables in my surname, and gave a wearied, ‘whatever’ look every time I tried to correct him, as if to say, ‘Here he goes again … Whatever.’ And he would mispronounce my name again at the next meeting.

At school, I constantly failed in my protests that there is no Irish version of my surname. It is part of my identity and my heritage, and I am proud of unbroken connection across centuries with the link provided by my surname with a small village in rural England.

People who grimaced at any mispronunciation or misspelling of Dún Laoghaire could not be bothered to inquire about the meaning of my surname. I have no problem when people spell my surname using the spelling of the name of that village. But the insistence of some people on gauche efforts to translate an English name into Irish came in the mid-1960s as the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising was part of an excuse by some people to define who was at the heart of Irish identity and who could be pushed to the margins or excluded.

The same people would be embarrassed if caught trying to do the same with family names of Lithuanian, Polish, Chinese or Nigerian origin today. So why is acceptable in Ireland to do this with family names of English origin?

Because of this experience, over half a century ago, I have some small insight into how the mispronunciation of their names may be felt today by public figures such as Kamala Harris, Brad Raffensperger and Pramila Jayapal.

But I was shrugged off with that ‘whatever’ look … and I still ended up with the contortion of Comartún on my Leaving Certificate in 1969 instead of my own surname. A generation later, when it came to my own sons’ experience in school, I had to resist their name being ‘translated into Irish’ as Mac Cumascaigh. It is a fine old Gaelic surname, dating back, perhaps, to the tenth century. But it is not the same name as Comerford, despite what is said on Dúchas, the Irish folklore website, or other websites that copy and paste from one another rather than carrying out research using primary sources.

Writing in The Irish Times last week [11 February 2021], Laura McKenny argued that names can exert control, shape identity and even obliterate history.

‘Our personal identity is inextricably linked with our name, whether or not we perceive it as a good fit,’ she wrote. ‘But names have meaning not only for own identity but for how others regard us. Make no mistake, names matter.’