Portrait of a Scholar
P. J. Hartog. A Memoir by his Wife, Mabel Hartog. (Constable. 10s.)
THE subject of this memoir was the son of a poor but gifted Jewish family. He took his B.Sc. at Owens College, Manchester, and after- wards studied at the Sorbonne and at Heidelberg. In 1889 he returned to Owens College as Berkeley Fellow, and here he met C. E. Montague, Professor Tout and other leading men He was a teacher by nature and happy in his work, but until he was nearly forty he was earning only £250 a year, of which £40 was sent to London to help his family. Hartog was a born organiser, and his opportunity arrived in 1903, when he was appointed Academic Registrar of London University. The prospect was one which might well have daunted the most courageous, but Hartog never faltered in his deter- mination to make the university worthy of the greatest city in the world. His time was so full that it was only by working before breakfast and snatching odd moments for food and sleep that he
got through the day at all. Inevitably he came up against a host of vested interests, and one of his bitterest battles was for the estab- lishment of the School of Oriental Studies, to which he brought "an almost missionary enthusiasm."
As a result he was chosen as a member of the commission which was sent out in 1918 under the chairmanship of his friend, Sir Michael Sadler, to enquire into the affairs of the University of Calcutta, with its fifty colleges and 60,000 undergraduates, which had defeated even Curzon sixteen years earlier. The report consisted of five large volumes and eight more volumes of appendices. Once again Hartog's tact stood him in good stead, and Sadler afterwards wrote that without his conciliatory influence the commission would have ended in failure. It was almost inevitable that after this he should be invited to become the first Chancellor of the new University of Dacca, " a model university of a type new to the Presidency and to India," which the commission had envisaged. Perhaps his five years at Dacca were the happiest of Hartog's life. The university was certainly his crowning achievement. It brought him a richly earned knighthood.
Hartog was now over sixty, when most men are content to rest on their laurels, but he had been little more than a week in his Kensington home when he once again set sail for India, this time as a member of the newly appointed Public Service Commission, which entailed another period of unremitting toil. Return to England brought no relaxation, and it was only on his eightieth birthday that he was compelled to give up his more strenuous activities. His later years were largely devoted to helping the victims of Nazi persecution. A host of admirers from many lands will be grateful to Lady Hartog for her moving portrait of a great scholar and a loyal friend and
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