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the profits of his father’s industrial achievements. At the rear of the first album, entitled “Isis Idols. No. XXXI”, is a jocular summary of Stewart’s time at Brasenose College, Oxford. In it the “young laird” is noted for having “combined a keen enthusiasm for sport with a touching abnegation of scholastic prizes”. Revealing a wealth of personal detail, the albums chronicle WBS’s life of sporting accolades and high living, featuring a remarkable number of official photos in an unusually large, deluxe format. WBS was chairman of the Freshman’s Wine Club, president of the Vincent’s Club (“the resort of the creme de la creme of undergraduate life”), a member of the elite Octagon Wine Club, the Phoenix Society (successor to the notorious Hellfire Club) and the Bullingdon Club, and was inducted into the Rose Croix Masonic Chapter of Oxford’s Apollo Lodge. Several balls also feature, including Oriel College Ball 1892 (taken at 5am), Freemason’s Ball (18 June 1894), Magdalen Ball (25 June 1895) and Vincent’s Club Ball (26 June 1895). With varied and interesting views, the albums also give a beautiful record of Oxford during these years, with WBS’s well-appointed college rooms depicted, together with several exterior shots of Brasenose, a view of Oxford from Magdalen Tower, and the great flood at Oxford in 1894.
Among his many sporting achievements, WBS was in the victorious Oxford crews in the 51st and 52nd Boat Races (1894 and 1895), and was described by the Boat Race historian G. C. Drinkwater as “a useful heavy-weight”. He rowed for Brasenose College in Torpids and Bumps and for Leander at Henley Royal Regatta, where he competed for the Grand Challenge and Steward’s Cup, winning the Grand Challenge in 1893. The albums include stunning images of his crews and races in progress and a menu card for the 1894 Boat Race dinner. In WBS’s unpublished memoir, held at the National Library of Scotland, “the wealthy young Scot describes a life of heavy drinking ending in wild Bacchanalian dances, vandalism, gambling, ragging on the masters, jaunts to London and the Corinthian Club where he was first introduced to the demi-monde. He recounts an occasion in 1893 when he ‘went to Greenwich one day and lunched at The Ship . . . I had partaken of a 40-course fish dinner with 17 different kinds of wine’”. After his graduation, in a merging of two industrial dynasties, he married Rachel Westmacott (1877–1952) on 11 April 1899, the daughter of Percy Westmacott, a partner and former managing director of one of Britain’s leading engineering firms, Sir W.
UNIVERSITY BURTON STEWART, William. Two photograph albums of Loretto School and University of Oxford. Edinburgh & Oxford: 1885–1895 A “GOLDEN LAD” – An outstanding pair of meticulously compiled albums, offering an impressive visual record of the Oxford university years of a sporting and hedonistic scion of a wealthy Scottish family. The albums contain a spectacular array of pin-sharp images of exceptional size and quality in an excellent state of preservation, offering an unusually detailed and highly evocative vision of time and place. William Burton Stewart (1872–1936) was the only son of James Stewart, one of the founders of Britain’s leading iron and steel combine. He was born in Glasgow and was schooled at the prestigious Loretto school, Edinburgh (some photographs of his time there are contained in the first album). WBS’s father died when he was 17 years old, but he went up to Oxford with a considerable allowance from his mother. There, he became a rowing and rugby blue, and lived a hedonistic and extravagant life funded by
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