Kirstie Morrison was a friend to many in Initiatives of Change, having met the Oxford Group in the 1930s, and a gifted tutor of English at St Anne’s College, Oxford, noted for her sense of humour and her positive outlook.
Kirstie was born in India, grew up in St Andrew’s, Scotland, and came to Oxford in 1923. Told by one college that she was ‘not university quality’, she took the exam for the Society of Oxford Home-Students (an association promoting the education of women at Oxford), and won a scholarship. Women had only been allowed to take degrees since 1920, and Kirstie took a First in English. After a brief teaching post at Bradford Grammar School, she returned to the Home-Students society as Assistant Tutor in 1930, and Tutor in 1933.
The Society became St Anne’s College in 1952, when Kirstie became a Fellow; later, in 1973, she became St Anne’s first Emeritus Fellow. Her membership of St Anne’s spanned 75 years. One of a great triumvirate of English tutors at St Anne’s, she did not publish, but was an unforgettable and encouraging teacher for generations of students. She would teach any period, but her interests tended particularly towards Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama. She gave an innovative series of lectures in the 1960s on the relationship between literature and art.
‘In matters of faith, she was always exploring, always questing,’ Brian Boobbyer said in her funeral address. ‘She was a believer, profoundly so – but did not find God easy. Her journey of faith was quickened in the 1930s by her meeting with The Oxford Group.’
Kirstie’s Visitors’ Book is intriguing. It spans 61 years of visitors to her home in Oxford, starting in summer 1937. The first pages include guests from South Africa, Ceylon, Madras, Jamaica, New Zealand, Norway, USA, Denmark, Warsaw, Australia, Finland. Many of the names are well-known from the IofC network of the time, and some are part of IofC history: Sam Shoemaker signed in July 1937; Frank Buchman in June 1938; Peter Howard in July 1944; Irène Laure in October 1982.
Kirstie lived at 12 Norham Road, Oxford from 1937 to 1998, and shared her home with Dr Charis Waddy for many years.
When visitors walked into Kirstie’s sitting room/study, they were frequently met with a query. Su Riddell once popped in for a quick visit and was promptly asked, ‘I’ve remembered that novels are said to have seven basic plots, and I’ve only got to five, can you help me?’ Mary Lean remembers being invited to a lunch party for foreign visitors, when Kirstie asked, ‘What would be your fantasy newspaper headline about yourself?’ Her own answer was ‘Aged don in daring child rescue’.
Denis Nowlan, Executive Director of IofC UK, reminisces: ‘I visited Kirstie once in her lovely Norham Road house, when I was a student at Oxford. She and Charis welcomed me to tea and crumpets in a sun-filled drawing room: two bright-eyed, sharp-witted women, with an appetite for conversation. Within minutes we were talking about Jane Austen. Somehow, that led on to how, as children, we acquire a love of language and stories from nursery rhymes and songs. From there, we moved on to folk songs, and how these story-songs enrich our imagination for life. I remembered one, learned at school, about a blushing maid and a saucy sailor. Kirstie was delighted with it, wrote down the words and got me to sing it. A vividly remembered moment from 50 years ago, of a happy and life-enhancing encounter.’
After Kirstie’s death in 1998 the house was bequeathed to Initiatives of Change and provides accommodation, office and meeting space. Those of us visiting, living, working here have continued to be inspired by Kirstie’s warm spirit of hospitality and encouragement, particularly for the young, for women, and for anyone with a questing faith in God.
