SIR HUMPHREY MILFORD

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24866, 4 May 1946, Page 5

SIR HUMPHREY MILFORD

OXFORD’S PUBLISHER RETIRES

The January issue of the “Periodical,*’ the house journal of the Oxford University Press, announced the retirement of Sir Humphrey Milford, publisher (in succession to Henry Frowde) since 1913. The summary account of his services to the press, which appears below, was followed in the “Periodical” by a number of personal tributes, of which one signed “G.W.S.H.” is reprinted here. The new publisher to the .Oxford University Press is Major Geoffrey Cumberlege, who was educated at Charterhouse and Worcester College, Oxford. He served from 1914 to 1919 in the first World War. and joined the Oxford University Press in the latter year, managed the Indian Branch (1919-1927) and the American Broich of the press (1927-1934), and was appointed publisher in October last year. I Humphrey Sumner Milford joined the Clarendon Press at Oxford in 1900 and transferred to London six years later. In 1913 he succeeded Henry Frowde as Publisher to the University of Oxford and manager of the London business. He has been responsible for a wide extension of the activities of the Oxford University Press at home and overseas, and during his term of office the medical, technical, juvenile, and music departments have grown from small beginnings to their present prominence in the publishing world. He originated the ‘‘Oxford Dictionary of Quotations” (which, besides being indispensable for every reference library, has been described as ‘‘the world’s best bedside book”) and made many notable additions to the World’s Classics, which now includes among its 500 volumes nearly all of Tolstoy as well as nearly all of Trollope. In 1936 the Publisher was knighted in recognition of his services to literature.

The catholicity of, Sir Humphrey Milford’s tastes in literature is referred to in the tributes printed below, and much of his success as a publisher is due to his pwn genuine love of books. Among the English poets Bis affections are given mainly to Browning, of whose works he has made an annotated selection. He has also edited volumes of Borrow, Clough, Cowper, and Leigh Hunt, and he took a large part in compiling the ‘‘Oxford Book of Regency Verse.”

II “Caesar” was what Charles Williams called him—but not in flattery, for. to C.W., Rome was a place of spiritual no less than temporal Empire. In his eyes its head was never Nero or Caligula, nor even Julius, but the Augustan Princeps in a markedly Virgilian version. And so, for those of us who knew him well (or thought we did), who breathed the atmosphere he made about him, “Caesar” has stayed the symbol of the good, the hierarchic, the balanced life, sole fount of honours and our City’s centre. What he was to his brother publishers and to the great Trade which trusted him has been told elsewhere. The pages of the “Periodical”—of which he was so proud—deserve a memory less dressed and formal. Those Svho worked in -close and daily contact with him were always few. To-day no more than three or four remain. They speak their' 4 farewells in tones that are a happy blend of affection and respect. He left an imprint on his years of government which we, his aides, will never quite forget. The man has gone, and so have the times. Never again, perhaps, will it be possible to think of business' in just those terms of leisure, to work in a climate so little touched by stress and strain. Not that he ever bred in us a sense of cushioned ease. He knew our difficulties, registered our blunders, marked (though often silently) our few successes. Very little (and certainly no misprint!) escaped his unobtrusive Vigilance. What he did not know of us he guessed, and he was seldom wrong, fie could, at times, be freezingly remote, at times a warm and stimulating friend. Winchester and New College in combination produce, at times, the Common Room’s peculiar “tone”, and Amen House (at least its dining-room and Library) might rank in spirit, through the years of his predominance, almost among the colleges of Oxford. And that was surely as it should be, for only so could Oxford as a “Press” deserve its rank and title. But he never forgot that London and the wider world of Letters was its field of action, and set himself to trim the gown of learning with a coloured fringe. If he loved Clough and Arnold, authors less staid could share with them his literary heart The names, the books, he would discuss, sitting relaxed in one of his great eighteenthcentury chairs, were endless: Proust and Forster' and Jane Austen, Wodehouse and Henry James, and Eliot and the vociferous young. For novels of detection he had a passion. Each time he went abroad on trips of business, he sent an S.O.S. among his friends the publishers, so that for days • pile would grow upon hi& table of all the best among contemporary “thrillers”. With these he held at bay Atlantic sickness, reading (and remembering) an average of two each day! His treatment of a book was never perfunctory. There can be few publishers who share his gift of tearing the guts from a manuscript however daunting. Perhaps it was because he loved his calling, perhaps because between the interests of his private and official lives there was so little difference, that he was so outstandingly successful as a publisher. To write thus of him in the past tense comes naturally to those who have to-say “good-bye”. But of no one could it be said with less truth that in turning from work he had turned from life. Retirement, for too many in the world of business, means resignation in its dreariest sense. Not so for “Caesar”. Leisure will give to him not aimlessness but wealth. At last, perhaps, he will find time to write a book that We have always hoped he had in mind. We, to whom he gave so much, expect from him that little more. —G.W.S.H.