7 - Alice through the cooking class

Summary

The King's College for Women (KCW) magazine, King's Minstrel, drew parallels with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland when in March 1929 it celebrated the college's formal transformation into King's College of Household and Social Science. The London University Senate had resolved that the Household and Social Science Department of KCW should now be recognised as a wholly independent school of the university. Thereafter it would conduct its own business, and all links with King's College in the Strand were severed. But had the Senate been in its right mind when it took this decision, asked the magazine's editorial? The question was followed with a short piece called ‘Alice through the cooking class’: ‘For some minutes, Alice stood without speaking, looking in all directions over the kitchen – and a most curious kitchen it was.’ Alice stands in this curious kitchen looking at a ‘luxurious parsley tree’ through one window and a kitchen garden with rows of shining pans and gooseberry bushes hung with sieves, strainers, whisks and spoons through another. White Pawns and Knights leap over tables laden with food, while the White Queen issues cooking instructions. She addresses the White Pawns, all lined up in front of her, each with a slate and a piece of chalk (just like the KCW housework students themselves): ‘ “The time has come”, the White Queen said,/ “To talk of many things;/ Of stews – and chips – and cooking caps - / Of cabbages – and King's - / And why the fat is boiling hot - / And whether pigs have wings”.’

Lectures for Ladies had come a long way from its tentative, chaperoned beginnings in Kensington's Vestry Hall. There were three constants, however. First, it was still an institution located in West London, some distance from the other University of London colleges. This geographical separation helped to foster a distinct curricular identity. Second, the commitment of its staff, supporters and students to creating a university education that met women's needs had in no way faded: on the contrary, the years since the first household science course had appeared in the prospectus had been full of hard- won achievements, intellectual innovations and imaginative expansion, all amidst unpredicted but consequential academic manoeuvrings which we will hear about in this chapter.