young man presently made bold to inquire what kind of work, in the event of appointment, he should be expected to do. ‘Oh, can’t you see? You heard me talking to that fellow.’
Cannan’s greatest reform was in the London office of the Press, where the distribution of Oxford books, and in particular the management of the business in bibles and prayer books, had been conducted with great skill by Mr. Henry Frowde. Cannan saw that the time had come for this side of the business to be directed by Oxford men. The changes which he was able to effect, and especially the appointment in 1913 of Mr. Humphrey Milford as publisher to the university (Mr. Frowde having retired at an advanced age), made the London office what it had never been, a real department of the university. He did much also to broaden the activities of the Press in the production of books, notably in the fields of modern politics and imperial history. He was not a believer in the promotion of research by endowment; but he spared no pains to help and encourage researchers of proved competence and to facilitate the publication of their work.
In politics Cannan was a conservative and a strong imperialist; but he was not a party man. He was interested in local affairs, and was for a time a member of the Oxford city council. He served on a number of university boards, where his opinion was valued on financial questions. He made few public appearances, and seldom left Oxford except to visit Switzerland or other mountainous districts; he was an ardent climber.
Cannan had a passion for anonymity. His one book—Selecta ex Organo Aristotelio Capitula (1897)—-was anonymous. He contrived to conceal his share, which was great, in making university appointments. He would not allow his name to appear in the prefaces of books in which he had a hand, and in which his characteristic style, smooth yet incisive, may sometimes be detected. His manner was formidable; his tone was dry, and even cynical; his last weapon, which he used ruthlessly, was silence; his enthusiasms were unspoken; he had a mean opinion of human intelligence in general, and not a very high one of human probity. This is, perhaps, not the description of a great man, or of a lovable one; yet Cannan was both. Those who knew him well became aware that they had to do with a man of great intellectual power and subtlety; of rare force of will; of unselfish devotion to the things he loved; and of a singularly tender heart.
Cannan married in 1891 Mary Wedderburn, daughter of A. Wedderburn Maxwell, of Glenlair, Kircudbrightshire, by whom he had three daughters. He died at Oxford 15 December 1919. His portrait was never painted; but photographs give a good impression of his piercing glance and of his salient feature, the beautifully modelled nose.
[The Times, 16 December 1919; articles in the Oxford Magazine by A. Quiller Couch and W. A. R[aleigh], January and March, 1920; Oxford and the War (by G. S. Gordon) in The Times Literary Supplement, 24 February 1921; personal knowledge.]
CAPES, WILLIAM WOLFE (1834–1914), historical scholar, the third son of Joseph Capes, who had a post at the Royal Mint and was also a bookseller in Paternoster Row, London, by his wife, Anne, daughter of Joseph Wolfe, of Reading, was born in London 1 January 1834 in the parish of St. Michael le Querne, probably in Paternoster Row. He was admitted to St. Paul’s School, London, 31 January 1843, under Herbert Kynaston [q.v.], then high master. He used daily to walk to school from Norwood, where his parents then resided. At sixteen he began his practice of foreign travel, which he continued throughout his life, by an expedition, mainly on foot, extending from Holland as far as Rome. In 1852 he proceeded to Oxford, having been elected to a Michel exhibition at Queen’s College. His chief instructors there were George Henry Sacheverell Johnson, afterwards dean of Wells, and William Thomson, afterwards archbishop of York. Under their influence admission to the foundation of the college was then being thrown open, and in June 1854 Capes, with Antony Benn Falcon and John Percival, afterwards bishop of Hereford, was elected to a taberdarship of the college, an emolument previously reserved to natives of Cumberland and Westmorland. He had before this, in 1853, obtained first classes at moderations in classics and mathematics, and in the final honour schools in 1855 he obtained a first class in classics and a second class in mathematics. He was elected fellow of Queen’s College 11 December 1856.
As an undergraduate Capes does not seem to have taken any part in the games then played in Oxford, but after graduation he rowed in the college torpid, and before he left Oxford he had bought a
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