Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Haverfield, Francis John
HAVERFIELD, FRANCIS JOHN (1860–1919), Roman historian and archæologist, the only son of the Rev. William Robert Haverfield, by his wife, Emily, sister of John Fielder Mackarness, bishop of Oxford [q.v.], was born at Shipston-on-Stour 8 November 1860. There was a foreign strain in his blood; he was a great-grandson of the miniature-painter, Jeremiah Meyer [q.v.], an immigrant from Würtemberg. His mother died when he was still in early childhood, and soon afterwards his father fell into a hopeless and prolonged decline. Growing up without experience of a normal home-life, the boy was seriously handicapped. He developed a certain abruptness of manner, which he never entirely shook off and which permanently hampered the free play of his sympathetic nature. Superimposed upon a character of marked strength and individuality, it too often prevented him, in after life, from being recognized for what he really was—one of the simplest and kindest of men, one of the most unselfish and steadfast of friends.
From a preparatory school at Clifton he entered Winchester as senior scholar in 1873. Six years later he went up to New College, Oxford, once more as scholar. He obtained a first-class in moderations with no great difficulty. A second class in ‘greats’ was the penalty of paying less attention to Greek philosophy than to Latin lexicography. In 1884, a year after taking his degree, he went as sixth-form master to Lancing College, where his somewhat unconventional methods proved highly successful. In his strenuous leisure he pursued various lines of original research, but finally concentrated on Roman epigraphy and Roman Britain, mainly under the influence of Mommsen, for whose work he had a profound admiration and whose personal acquaintance he had made during one of his frequent visits to the Continent. In 1892 he was invited to return to Oxford, and for the next fifteen years he resided at Christ Church as a senior student. Here his unresting energy and his more than generous hospitality soon made him a prominent figure. His pen was never idle; practically every important classical book that appeared was reviewed by him in the Guardian or elsewhere, and he edited Henry Nettleship's Essays and re-edited Conington's Eclogues and Georgics (1895). Amid his multifarious interests, Roman Britain became more and more his chief concern. In vacation he moved up and down the country, visiting Roman sites, stimulating or directing excavations, guiding and advising local antiquaries. In 1907 Henry Pelham Francis [q.v.] died, and Haverfield was chosen to succeed him as Camden professor of ancient history, the appointment carrying with it an official fellowship at Brasenose College. A month before his election he had married Miss Winifred Breakwell. They had no children. Henceforward he lived in a house which he built for himself on Headington Hill. This was his happiest and most fruitful period. Freed from college routine, he was able to devote himself whole-heartedly to advanced work. At home his influence extended year by year. Abroad he commanded a respect such as only a small minority of British scholars have ever enjoyed. His relations with colleagues in different foreign countries were of the friendliest character. With some of them he was in constant communication, giving and receiving much helpful criticism. The outbreak of war in 1914 thus came on him as a stunning blow, and its progress was to bring him the loss of intimate friends. At the end of 1915 the continuous strain and anxiety induced an attack of cerebral haemorrhage. Despite a partial recovery he never regained full vigour. On 1 September 1919 the end came quite suddenly.
When Haverfield first approached it, the subject of Roman Britain was, to use his own phrase, ‘the playground of the amateur’. Before his death he could claim that ‘our scientific knowledge of the island, however liable to future correction and addition, stands by itself among the studies of the Roman Empire’. He might truthfully have added that this was his own achievement. And it was accomplished almost single-handed; such good work as was done by others, was done largely through his inspiration and example. Although he did not live to produce the systematic treatise which he contemplated, the bibliography of his writings, containing as it does some five hundred entries, is a singularly impressive monument. Master of a nervous and exceptionally lucid style, he penetrated into every nook and corner of his subject, bringing to bear upon its problems, not only a vast knowledge of miscellaneous details, but a breadth of outlook, a sureness of touch, and a sanity of judgement that never failed to illuminate. Conspicuous in the long list are his two sets of Additamenta (1892, 1913) to the Berlin Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, his Romanization of Roman Britain (1905, 4th ed. 1923), and the numerous chapters which he contributed to the Victoria County History. His Ford lectures, The Roman Occupation of Britain, published posthumously in 1924, provide the most convenient conspectus of his results.
[Family papers; private information; personal knowledge. For fuller details see biographical notices in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. ix and English Historical Review, 1920. There is a bibliography in Journal of Roman Studies, vol. viii. The first of these notices and the bibliography are reprinted, with additions, in the Ford lecture volume.]