ECONOMISTS' PAPERS
Series Two: The Papers of John Neville Keynes, 1864-1917, from Cambridge University Library

Editorial Introduction by Rita McWilliams Tullberg

John Neville Keynes (1852-1949)

To many readers, John Neville Keynes is known simply as the father of his son, the outstanding and influential economist, John Maynard Keynes. Neville Keynes was inordinately proud of his eldest son, but never coveted a role on the national or international stage for himself. Cambridge academic life, University administration, teaching and writing in logic and economics, his college, family, relatives and hobbies filled his life and afforded him opportunities for the skilled and faithful service within the community that his conscience demanded. Little detail of this would remain had not Neville Keynes kept a diary almost daily for over a half century (1864-1917). These record a mixture of both his official and private life and provide the reader with an insight into major and minor figures of Cambridge life, into university administration, extra-mural study schemes, the debates of the Moral Sciences Board during an important period of change, as well as courtship and the domestic affairs of a comfortable middle-class family in late Victorian England, their ailments and their entertainments. The diaries also serve as a reminder that other members of the Keynes family besides his most famous son – his wife and his other two children, Margaret and Geoffrey – were also outstanding figures who have made significant contributions to British social life.

John Neville Keynes was born in 1852 in Salisbury where his father, John Keynes, had inherited the family brush-making business. The elder Keynes lacked enthusiasm for manufacturing, and when his first wife, who had borne him one daughter, Fanny, died in a cholera epidemic, he handed the business over to his brother and turned to his life's hobby, horticulture. He prospered as a market gardener, specialising in dahlias and roses. He served his town as Mayor of Salisbury, 1876-77.

In 1851 John Keynes married Anna Maynard Neville. The only child of this union was John Neville Keynes, born 31 August 1852. The family were active Congregationalists and, socially and academically, Neville Keynes suffered the disabilities still attached to nonconformism by the largely Church of England establishment, as well as the comfort of a wide-spread circle of like-minded, Congregationalist friends and acquaintances. And although he was the son of a nationally recognised dahlia expert, he was, nonetheless, the son of a tradesman. This accounts for the emphasis given to and anxiety involved in the choice of education as the route for clever children of successful tradesman to move into the ranks of the professional classes, and for the unfamiliar academic road taken by Neville Keynes to Cambridge. Unlike his children, Neville Keynes did not attend any of England's better-known public schools. After spending his early years in local schools for middle-class children, he was sent at the age of eleven to Amersham Hall, 'a small, exclusive Dissenting Academy of about a hundred boys at Caversham, near Reading' (Skidelsky, 1983, p. 7). The Headmaster, Ebenezer West (whose son, Alfred West, became a close friend of Neville's and features in his diaries for many years), was determined that his students should develop excellence in both their moral characters and academic records, the latter as measured by results in the public examinations which the universities were now organising for the benefit of secondary-school boys. Neville Keynes showed promise in both classics and mathematics, but was of a 'nervous disposition' and inclined to lose marks in examinations because of anxiety.

It is interesting that this nervosity was identified so early by his teachers. The regime of examinations to which Keynes successfully submitted himself between the years 1870 and 1876 is remarkable, so that when, at the end of this period, his diffidence and lack of self-confidence reappears, it is tempting to diagnose a condition of mental exhaustion. To understand this side of Neville Keynes' character, attention should perhaps be focused on his upbringing in a household of doting females. His mother, grandmother, Aunt Mary and to some extent, half-sister Fanny, were devoted to the welfare of father and son, even to the exclusion of service in the community, in which they appeared to take little interest. Neville Keynes was particularly attached to his Aunt, who is described as being 'weighed down by an anxiety neurosis' (Brown, 1950, p. 44); Geoffrey Keynes wrote 'My father, in any situation of uncertainty, assumed a settled attitude of being "prepared for the worst" (Keynes, G. L., in Milo Keynes, ed., 1975, p. 27).

Neville Keynes' first public academic achievement was to win a Gilchrist Scholarship in 1869 to University College, London. He entered University Hall, a hostel for Nonconformist students attended not only by some of his Amersham schoolfriends, but also by like-minded sons of Nonconformist tradesmen climbing the social ladder in what was still a hostile academic and professional world. The college, later to become a constituent institution of London University, was founded specifically to cater for the education of Nonconformists, who were excluded by the Religious Test Acts from the old Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Test Acts were lifted in the case of Cambridge in 1856, but other disabilities, such as proceeding to the M.A. or the holding of Fellowships and University offices remained until 1871.

In July 1870, John Neville Keynes passed Part 1 of the London B.A. with First Class Honours and the following year was placed equal first in Part II, where he took Logic and Moral Philosophy Honours. He then tried to get a scholarship to Cambridge, succeeding on his third attempt.1 He was awarded a mathematical scholarship to Pembroke in June and became one of 24 freshmen at the college that year.

After only a few weeks of study for the Mathematical Tripos (that is, the Honours Degree examination), Keynes discovered that he greatly disliked the subject and wanted to switch to the Moral Sciences. Exactly what he disliked about Cambridge mathematics is not made clear in his diaries. These record instead his anxiety regarding his 'prospects', since nothing but a top placing in this highly competitive degree examination would guarantee him a Fellowship. Yet to drop the prestigious mathematics course in favour of the unglamorous Moral Sciences, which were unlikely to lead to an academic career, might jeopardise the fulfilment of his own and his parents' ambitions on his behalf. With hindsight, it is easy to assume that Keynes was distressed by the highly competitive nature of the Mathematics Tripos, where results were given in order of merit and anything less than Senior Wrangler might be considered a failure. But this cannot have been the whole story, since even the Moral Sciences Tripos crowned a 'Senioralist' (though among far fewer entrants), and Keynes entered other competitive examinations during this period of intensive academic work. Whatever the reason, his dislike of Cambridge-style mathematics was such that he felt that he must leave the University. Exhorted by his parents, tutor and even Henry Fawcett, a family friend and Cambridge Professor of Political Economy, he continued the course until the end of the academic year, and then, after winning an open scholarship at Pembroke, announced his decision to switch to the Moral Sciences.

The Moral Sciences Tripos covered Logic, Moral and Political Philosophy, Mental Philosophy and Political Economy. First founded in 1848, the Tripos had attracted neither good teachers nor ambitious candidates. But the mood of questioning the absolute truths of both received religion and Euclid, as well as the relevance of studies in the language and literature of Ancient Greece and Rome to the problems of an industrial and increasingly democratic society, turned the attention of a number of important Cambridge thinkers to the Moral Sciences, giving the subjects both prestige and sound, academic credentials.2 Keynes had already proved himself in two of these subjects, and he began to enjoy the extensive reading the course required. Yet uncertainty about his career prospects as a graduate in Moral Sciences led him to take Part I and II of the London B.Sc., gaining a First in geology and chemistry in October 1874. Even this was not thought to be sufficient and he prepared himself for the London M.A., aiming at the Gold Medal awarded to the candidate placed first. In December 1875, he took his Cambridge Tripos as Senior Moralist and in the following June, claimed the Gold Medal in the London M.A. All this was the result of a strict regime of hard reading, carefully noted in his diary as the number of hours spent at work morning, afternoon and evening, a habit he continued throughout his life. He did allow himself a degree of relaxation, playing chess, even at tournament level, trying his hand at rowing, meeting his friends, many of them former students at University Hall, old friends of the family or new ones from the Congregational meeting-place in Downing Place, replaced in 1874 by Emmanuel Church built across the road from Pembroke College.3

Keynes did consistently well in all the subjects of the Tripos, but his best subject was Logic. He was elected a non-teaching Fellow of Pembroke in 1876 and of University College, London in the same year. He began coaching in Logic and Political Economy in 1876, much influenced by his former teacher, Alfred Marshall, who wanted him to specialise in the latter. Marshall encouraged him to work for the University's Cobden Prize, writing an extended essay on 'The effects of machinery on wages', and Keynes even signed a contract to write an elementary book on economics. However, he did not win the Prize and when Marshall left Cambridge for Bristol in 1877, the book project was dropped. Keynes handed over his economics teaching to Foxwell and concentrated on Logic.

Among the students at Newnham Hall (as it was then known), was a young girl of seventeen and a half who came from an important Congregationalist family in Bedford. She was Florence Ada Brown, eldest daughter of Dr John Brown, minister of the Bunyon Manse, often considered the centre of Congregationalism in England. He mother and grandmother both ran girls' schools and Florence had received an education at home which had resulted in First Class Honours in the Senior Local Examinations run by Cambridge for students still at school. She was awarded a College Scholarship to Newnham in 1878 where she studied for the Cambridge Higher Local Examinations, first taking the obligatory Group A subjects with a distinction in English language and literature and Group C where she gained a distinction in arithmetic. The following year, 1880, Keynes records that she had passed in Latin and gained a first class in mathematics. The majority of girls coming to Newnham at the time were aiming solely at the Cambridge Higher Local Examinations, originally designed by the University to 'test and attest' the educational standards of women going into teaching. Mid-century, women had no access to university education or examinations and had to get their education wherever and however they could. Many were dissatisfied with their own knowledge and lack of standards as teachers, and had appealed to the universities for help. Cambridge University's Higher Local Examinations for Women were introduced to meet this need in 1869. Five years later, they were opened to male students.4

Students at what was to become Girton College and some of the Newnham students attempted Tripos examinations, which they were allowed to take informally and be marked, if the examiners so agreed. The emphasis in Newnham, however, was on raising standards among those who were to become school-teachers. This was presumably the purpose for which Florence Brown came to Cambridge. There is no indication that she had any intention of staying longer than two years, taking several subjects at Higher Local level and then returning home to assist her mother with the school. Being so young, her father had particularly requested that her social engagements outside the College be limited. But, as she wrote herself, she returned home in 1880 secretly engaged to the young don, John Neville Keynes.

The couple had met in the home of their families' mutual Congregationalist friend, William Bond, whose 'hospitable house in Brookside was open to many young people', friends of his daughters and of his son, Henry (Keynes, F.A. (1950), p. 39). They were also members of the same Congregationalist chapel. The Principal of Newnham, A. J. Clough, did not want the College to be regarded as a marriage market and tried (unsuccessfully, it may be noted), to discourage liaisons between the students and their lecturers. At the same time, College authorities were anxious to show that their young ladies were not turning into unsociable freaks spending all their time at their books. Social engagements with approved relatives or family friends were therefore accepted. Keynes' first encounter with 'Miss Brown' seems to have taken place in December 1878 and by May 1880 he had finally plucked up courage to speak 'openly' to her. By the following month he had received Mr Brown's blessing to become engaged to his daughter. The couple proceeded with great discretion and the engagement was not announced until after Florence had left Newnham and when the Brown family had 'happened to meet' Neville Keynes in Switzerland.

It is clear from the diaries that were initially withheld or missing from the deposition made by Geoffrey Keynes in 1970 that the course of their engagement involved misunderstandings and some disappointments. Many pages have been removed from the diaries covering 1881-82, though it is not clear by whose hand. References are made to unhappiness in the early days of their engagement, readily understood when reading the record of this demure Victorian courtship. When the shy couple did meet, usually with the Brown family in Bedford since by this time Florence had left Cambridge, they seldom had more than a few minutes alone together and a gesture or a few words could easily give rise to misunderstandings. Neville Keynes was greatly troubled by self-doubt and wondered whether he was 'worthy' of his fiancée. Both families felt the couple were 'delicate' and predicted that their lives would be cut short (the couple celebrated their golden wedding in 1942 and both lived to their 97th year). Behind some of these problems lay Neville Keynes' diffidence, pessimistic anxiety and self-confessed hypochondria, while Florence discovered that he lacked ambition, at least in terms of an academic career, and did not always feel at ease with her future mother-in-law.5

Keynes' father died in 1878 and the horticultural business was sold, leaving Keynes with a considerable legacy from which he had a comfortable income of about £800 annually, assuming his investments were sound.6 But a man about to marry and prepare for a family needed an additional source of income if he wanted to live without the anxiety of managing an investment portfolio. Unlike his son, who was to love the excitement of stocks, shares and futures, Neville Keynes' anxious disposition, together with a work ethic and sense of duty inherited from his middle-class, Congregationalist background, did not permit him to live without a paid occupation. Under existing Pembroke Statutes, Keynes would have to relinquish his Fellowship on marriage.7 His current Fellowship expired in 1882 and if appointed to a full Fellowship he would be unable to marry. He therefore had to choose between remaining a Fellow and single, leaving Cambridge to find a teaching post in London or in the university colleges which were springing up in provincial centres, getting himself appointed to a university or college teaching post in Cambridge, or turning to administration. The first two options were unthinkable, so he chose a combination of the latter.

As can be seen from his diaries, Keynes taught and coached for a number of Colleges, including Newnham and Girton, but had no University appointment. Rumours began to circulate late in 1880 that Jevons was considering retirement from his Chair as Professor of Political Economy at University College, London. Keynes' friends and colleagues from the Moral Sciences supported him for the post with enthusiastic testimonials. But he backed away from the contest when he learnt that Herbert Foxwell had put himself forward as candidate. Instead he was attracted by an administrative post with the Local Examinations and Lectures Syndicate. Friends told him that he was worth something better but he confided to his diary that he felt it was the only work for which he was suited. In March 1881 he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Syndicate. G. F. Browne (later Bishop of Bristol) was the overall Secretary, while Keynes looked after the business of the Examination Syndicate.8 When Brown resigned as Secretary in 1892, Neville Keynes took over and held the post until 1910. In 1884, he was appointed University Lecturer in Moral Sciences, a post which he held until 1911 and involved him in a considerable amount of work as an examiner. It also led to his appointment as Chairman of the Special Board for Moral Sciences, 1906-12, as well as Chairman of the Special Board for Economics and Politics, 1908-20. In 1892, he became a Member of the Council of the Senate, the University's governing body, and was appointed Secretary for the following year. In this capacity, he worked closely with the University Registrar ('Registrary' as it is known in Cambridge) and from 1910 combined the posts of Council Secretary and Registrary which he then held until a reluctant retirement in 1925, shortly before his 73rd birthday.

With his appointment to the Local Examinations Syndicate settled, Keynes and his future wife decided to buy a large semi-detached house which was to be built in Harvey Road, at that time on the outskirts of Cambridge although still within walking distance of the town centre and the colleges. Other academic families with children settled in the same area and feature in the diaries as companions to the Keynes' children.9 His marriage in 1882 and birth of his first son, Maynard, in June 1883 seem to have energised Neville Keynes and to increase his interest in academic work. In 1884 he published Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic, based on the lessons and lectures which he had given his students since his own graduation. By all accounts the book was an excellent pedagogical textbook in formal logic, valued for Keynes' ability to devise and formulate 'simple, elegant and powerful methods of treatment, which involve no technical mathematics and depart to the least possible extent from the traditional logic of 'simple' propositions' (Broad, 1950, pp. 404-05), and for the large number of interesting and ingenious problems in formal logic provided for the student to work on. Critics have noted that the book did not include any of the modern symbolic logic which was growing in importance – but the book made no claim to be comprehensive. It went through four editions and many reprints, the last being 1906.

A further opportunity arose for Keynes to pursue a strictly academic path in December 1884. Alfred Marshall had abruptly left his post in Oxford, where he was teaching economics to candidates for the Indian Civil Service, to take up the Cambridge chair as Professor in Political Economy. Marshall tried to persuade Keynes to take over his Oxford post which he felt sure would lead to the Oxford economics chair as soon as it became vacant. He bombarded Keynes with letters and telegrams filled with flattery and appeals to his sense of duty. Even Florence was enlisted in the campaign. Keynes agreed to fulfil Marshall's teaching commitments for the rest of the academic year, travelling to Oxford one day each week, but could not be persuaded to extend the arrangement nor to apply for the Oxford chair when it became vacant in 1888. Keynes was always reluctant to leave Cambridge which he felt was the best place for his children to grow up and where he enjoyed his work with the details of university administration. He was not a man who sought fresh fields and new experiences and preferred to minimise stress by dealing, with increasing competence and tact, with familiar people and familiar problems.

The Oxford episode did, however, provide the impetus for Keynes' second academic work, published in 1891 as the Scope and Method of Political Economy. The book was widely appreciated as solving (or smoothing over) points of methodological difference which had caused so much conflict in the 1870s and 1880s. This was achieved by using the same skills of commonsense, patience and tolerance which Keynes used to such effect in his administrative work: careful definition of the problems involved, combined with a logician's clarity of exposition, and the placing of all controversial material in appendices. With considerable diffidence he put forward his written work for the degree of Doctor of Science, which was awarded to him in 1891.

With such a burden of teaching and administrative work, it is difficult to understand how Keynes found time for the diary which he continued to keep with some detail at least until 1917. He recorded not only the minutiae of academic business, the recurring controversies regarding the status of women students, and the squabbles of the Special Boards over syllabus changes, but also so much of his family life, the visits to and from relatives, the childhood ailments of his three children, his participation in their interests and pride in their academic achievements, the hobbies which he shared with them, the growing public work carried out by his wife, the details of their light reading, visits to the theatre, holidays and his rounds of golf. Irritation over the stubbornness of colleagues and mild criticism over certain habits of family members are also recorded when his patience was tried to its considerable limits. Such outbursts were few. As his younger son, Geoffrey, remarks: 'He was quiet and gentle and not a man of many words' (G. L. Keynes, 1983, p. 14).

It is difficult to judge whether the time which he spent on his diary, including the copying into it of letters received from colleagues and then from his children at school and in adulthood, was the result of strict habits acquired during his years of study and examinations or a reflection on the limited amount of administrative work generated by teaching and the Senate at a time when the University was still small and dominated by its strongly independent colleges. In later years, his diaries became less detailed and were divided between a simple record of the times of meetings and other academic business, and reports on his family's war work as and when these were available.

Geoffrey Keynes, who became both a famous surgeon and expert on the works of William Blake, painted a portrait of his parents as having 'a loveable aura of perfect integrity and goodness without stuffiness or pomposity; they were affectionate without sentimentality, and were careful not to interfere with the personalities of their children, while always fostering any worthwhile interests as soon as they discerned them' (Geoffrey Keynes in Milo Keynes, ed., 1975, p. 27). This interest and pride in their three children's diverse talents, careers and achievements continued into adulthood – though no reader of the diaries can mistake the very special place which Maynard held in his father's heart.

These are the diaries of a contented man who, after a degree of early self-doubt, found great happiness in his work, his marriage, his family, friends and hobbies. The contentment was clearly expressed in a speech acknowledging the presentation of his portrait by Sir Gerald Kelly to the University in 1927:

I have always thought myself fortunate in being able to spend my life in University work. I cannot imagine any other surroundings that would have been so congenial to me, or where I should have had such consideration and kindness as have always fallen to my lot here (F. A. Keynes, 1950, p. 109).

The series ends abruptly with the diary for 1917. No indication is given there that Keynes intended to drop his life-time habit of recording, at the very least, his round of committee meetings and family news. The volume of University business to be recorded grew rapidly after the end of the first world war and his family became even more prominent on the local and national stage. In particular, many historians will regret that the period during which Maynard Keynes, as chief Treasury representative, acted as advisor to the British negotiators at Versailles – and his resignation – is not recorded by his father's diary, as well as the medical career of Geoffrey Keynes and the public work carried out by his wife, Florence Keynes, and daughter, Margaret Hill. Indeed, there is no apparent reason why the diary series should stop in 1917 and we can perhaps hope that like the 'missing' diaries of 1877-81, further volumes may someday be discovered.10

I should like to thank Jacky Cox, Polly Hill, Elizabeth Leedham-Green, Alex Saunders and Frances Willmoth for the information which they have given me concerning Keynes papers deposited in Cambridge, and the Keynes family tree.

Bibliography and further reading

Broad, C. D. (1950), 'Obituary: Dr. J. N. Keynes (1852-49)', Economic Journal, vol. 60, June,
pp. 403-07

Deane, Phyllis (1987), 'John Neville Keynes' in Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., and Newman, P., eds,
New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, London: Macmillan

Dillard, Dudley (1968), 'John Neville Keynes' in Sills, D. L. ed., International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, New York: Free Press

Keynes, John Neville (1884), Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic, London: Macmillan

Keynes, John Neville (1891), The Scope and Method of Political Economy, London: Macmillan

Keynes, Florence Ada (1950), Gathering up the Threads, Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd

Keynes, Geoffrey L. (1981), The Gates of Memory, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Keynes, Milo (ed.) (1975), Essays on John Maynard Keynes, Cambridge: CUP

Pigou, A. C. (1950), 'Personal Recollection of Dr. Keynes', Economic Journal, vol. 60, June,
pp. 407-08

Skidelsky, R. (1983), John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920, London: Macmillan

Skidelsky, R. (1992), John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour 1920-1937, London: Macmillan

Material in other archives in Cambridge

In addition to the John Neville Keynes diaries, details of which are given below, Cambridge University Library houses the John Neville Keynes correspondence containing approximately 290 items, as well as material relevant to Keynes' tasks as Secretary to the Local Examinations Syndicate, Secretary to the Council and as Registrary.

There are two other main catalogued sources of John Neville Keynes papers in Cambridge: The Marshall Library at the Faculty of Economics and Politics and among the John Maynard Keynes papers at the Modern Archive Centre, King's College, Cambridge.11

The Marshall Library

There are 439 items of correspondence (mostly to Keynes), 37 printed items and three legal agreements with Macmillan the publisher. The papers have been divided into five main sections:

1. general correspondence;

2. letters of thanks for copies of his book;

3. material relating to Henry Sidgwick, mainly Keynes obituary in the Economic Journal and including letters of thanks for off-prints of the obituary;

4. material relating to Keynes acting on behalf of Pigou at tribunals re. Pigou's war service 1916;

5. very miscellaneous – chess score sheets, notes on books read etc.

There is also a small number of letters from Keynes to others which are held in the papers of the recipient.12

Modern Archive Centre, King's College

1. Typescript copies of correspondence with Alfred Marshall concerning the Royal Economic Society, 1888-1902;

2. Notes taken by John Neville Keynes as an undergraduate at philosophy lectures given by Henry Sidgwick and others; with notes from reading and several essays by John Neville Keynes on philosophical subjects 1874-76;

3. John Neville Keynes' holiday diaries, 1895-1902;

4. (Florence Ada Keynes' holiday diary, 1899);

5. Correspondence of John Maynard Keynes with his parents J. N. and F. A. Keynes, 1897-1946 – 11 volumes and two envelopes.13

The Diaries

1. Provenance

Geoffrey Keynes, Neville Keynes' youngest child, deposited 41 of his father's diaries with Cambridge University Library on 20 October 1970. Some diaries, those for 1866 - May 1868, the last months of 1873, and for 1877-1882, were missing from that original donation. Readers, while regretting in particular a break in the record during this latter period, which was of special interest for John Neville Keynes' life and for University affairs, drew the conclusion that the diaries covered sensitive family issues and that his son had felt some hesitancy about making them public.14

Following his father's death in 1982, Geoffrey Keynes' eldest son, Professor Richard D. Keynes, presented to the library his grandfather's 'private' diary for 1881-82, which covers most of the period of his engagement to Florence Ada Brown, and other family matters. Finally, the sequence was almost completed by the discovery of the diaries for September 1877 - December 1879 and for 1880 in an attic during house removal. They were presented to the Library by Dr Janet Humphrey, née Hill, granddaughter of John Neville Keynes.

J. N. KEYNES' DIARIES

Add.MSS

7827 1864
7828 1865
7829 June 1868 – October 1873
7830 10-24 July 1872
7831 (1) January 1874 – August 1877
(2) September 1877 – December 1879 15
(3) 1880 16
7832 (1) 1881-82 17
(2) 1882
7833 January 1883 – 18 August 1884
7834 19 August 1884 – 31 December 1885
7835 1886
7836 1887
7837 1888
7838 1889
7839 1890
7840 1 January 1891 – 22 February 1891
7841 26 February 1891 – 1 January 1892
7842 1892
7843 1893
7844 1894

and so on, with one volume per annum until

FOOTNOTES

1 He failed in his first two attempts to gain a College scholarship, suffering first from concussion sustained in a skating accident and then from severe toothache.

2 Henry Sidgwick, although Senior Classicist and a Wrangler, switched to teaching in the Moral Sciences Tripos, as did Alfred Marshall, second Wrangler in 1865. Herbert Foxwell, W. Moore Ede, William Cunningham, F. W. Maitland, Henry Cunyinghame and James Ward took the Moral Sciences Tripos, as, unofficially, did Mary Paley (Marshall).

3 Significantly, the funds for the new building were raised largely through the efforts of William Bond, in whose Cambridge home Neville Keynes met his future wife.

4 They were originally intended for students beyond the normal secondary school age. The standard was high, and they became accepted as equivalent to or even better than university matriculation. By the end of the century, it was generally accepted that students would matriculate before coming up to university by way of these examinations. For greater detail, see McWilliams Tullberg, 1995, App. A. For the story of women's university education at Cambridge, see McWilliams Tullberg, 1975.

5 Florence would have preferred Keynes to apply for the Professorship in Political Economy at University College, London when Jevons resigned rather than to take on an administrative post in Cambridge, and she clearly was far more taken than was Neville with Marshall's plan to install Keynes in Oxford early in 1885 as the potential future occupant of the Oxford Political Economy Chair, see pp. 18 & 19.

6 His wife records that this grew steadily during the 1880s, at a time when prices were falling, and was enlarged by a further inheritance from his mother in 1907.

7 Although the celibacy rule had already been rescinded by other Colleges in the first years of the 1880s, Pembroke waited until 1884. Keynes was not made an Honorary Fellow of his College until 1911, after his appointment as Registrary to the University.

8 That is, he became responsible for the examinations organised by Cambridge University for junior and senior schools and for the Higher Local Examinations taken by students beyond school-age.

9 Florence Keynes was still living in the house at the time of her death in 1958.

10 The attention of readers is drawn to the correspondence between John Maynard Keynes and his parents, 1897-1946, deposited with the John Maynard Keynes papers at King's College, Cambridge.

11 In all cases concerning correspondence between John Neville Keynes and Alfred Marshall, reference should first be made to Whitaker, John (1996), The Correspondence of Alfred Marshall, Economist, 3 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12 For fuller information, please contact the Archivist, The Marshall Library, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Economics and Politics, Austin Robinson Building, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DD.

13 For fuller information, please contact the Modern Archivist, King's College Library, Cambridge CB2 1ST.

14 In his autobiography (1981), Geoffrey Keynes writes: 'We have my father's diary for the 1881-2 period [describing Neville Keynes' courtship]. All the later volumes, dealing mainly with University affairs have been deposited in the University Library…'

15 Presented by Dr Janet Humphrey, daughter of A. V. Hill and Margaret Keynes, 28 January 1993. Found in an attic on moving house.

16 See provenance.

17 Presented by Prof. R. D. Keynes 'from the library of Sir Geoffrey Keynes', 10 January 1983. Covers the whole of 1882, and is largely personal, being much concerned with Florence Brown, who was to become his wife, and with his mother, whereas 7832 (2) 1882 is a record of engagements with comments, including accounts of University business.

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