California lectures (2)
December 2015
17 Dec. 7.30. The Hillside Club, Berkeley.
Nicholas Friend. The Hillside Club and the True Meaning of Civilization.
The Hillside Club emerged as a powerful force when clearminded women and influential
men joined together to challenge profound social, philosophical, geopolitical and economic
forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. Speaking with a distinct voice in Berkeley's
earliest years, the Hillside Club members insisted there be a mutually beneficial relationship
between Berkeley’s unique geographic setting and the human activities practiced therein.
Their collective intelligence and determination guided the formation of a university town
unique in the world yet deeply connected over time, land and oceans with other
communities in Britain, Europe, and Scandinavia.
Landscape, architecture and society are intimately woven together in the story of
Berkeley’s emergence as a place at one with the eternal spirit of its location on the hills
above the San Francisco Bay, its rugged oaks and creeks, and the promise afforded by its
views of Mount Tamalpais and the Golden Gate. The Hillside Club responded to threats to
the genius loci by drawing on the collective wisdom of its European antecedents. The lecture
begins with an exploration of the Hillside Club’s ancestry in Bishop Berkeley’s Bermuda
project, Samuel Coleridge’s Pantisocracy, Robert Owen’s New Lanark and New Harmony,
Titus Salt’s Saltaire, John Ruskin’s Guild of St George, and William Morris’s Firm. Friend will
investigate how Samuel and Henrietta Barnett's Toynbee Hall, Jonathan Carr’s Bedford Park,
Ebenezer Howard’s plans for Letchworth, Octavia Hill’s National Trust, and the Hillside
Club were made possible by their example. The talk will conclude with an appreciation
of the Hillside Club’s role in establishing Berkeley as a fair and revitalizing environment for
its citizens, both civilized and civilizing, a role surely as topical today as it was then.
18 Dec. 7.00-8.00 Swedenborgian Church, San Francisco.
Clive Wilmer. Ruskin in Modern Poems: A Reading and a Commentary.
Clive Wilmer is a poet who has been reading the work of John Ruskin for nearly 50 years.
He thinks that the great Victorian has much to say to modern people, both here and in
Europe, on a great many subjects. In particular, sees Ruskin’s prose as an important
influence on modern poetry, including the poems he writes himself. On this occasion, he will
read and talk about passages from Ruskin’s work and poems by some of the poets affected
by it – Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Geoffrey Hill and other poets, including himself.
19 Dec. 7.30. First Church of Christ Scientist
Nicholas Friend and Clive Wilmer: News from Nowhere. A Dialogue about
William Morris’s Utopian Novel
In 1890, in the throes of the industrial revolution, William Morris described for the world
his uplifting dream of what civilization might become—the friend, rather than the enemy, of
nature, fraternity, cultural heritage, and worthy and pleasurable labour. It was a vision to
inspire social reform movements and communities rooted in utopian ideals, including
Berkeley’s own Hillside Club.
20 Dec. 12.30-1.30. Swedenborgian Church, San Francisco (directly after morning service).
Clive Wilmer. Reading Nature in Architecture: A student of John
Ruskin looks at the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco.
Clive Wilmer is a poet who has been reading the work of John Ruskin for nearly 50 years.
Like Ruskin, he has been drawn all his life to sacred buildings – from the stone circle at
Avebury in Wiltshire to Chartres Cathedral. He recently spoke on Ruskin, who inspired the
Arts and Crafts movement all over the world, at the Swedenborgian Church, and would like
(after morning service there) to reflect upon the experience in Ruskinian terms.