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OXFORD
THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS VOLUME WERE ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY THE
CARL HENTSCHEL COLOURTYPE, LTD.
7^:>\cv^-vi^
THE CLARENDON BUILDING, BROAD
STREET
It is the Roman Doric portico of the "Building" we
see rising in the centre of the picture, surmounted by
a huge leaden figure, forming one of the acroteria of
the pediment.
This noble piece of architecture was erected from
the proceeds of the sale of copies of Lord Clarendon's
History of the Rebellion, completed in 1713.
Looking west, on the right are some old houses,
beyond which lie Trinity and Balliol Colleges.
OXFORD- PAINTED
BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE R.I.
DESCRIBED BY EDWARD
THOMAS • PUBLISHED BY
A. & C. BLACK . LONDON -W
Published November 1903
liCNRY MORSE STErTHSSS
Prefatory Note
Most of these chapters have been filled by a brief
search into my recollections of Oxford. They aim,
therefore, at recording my own impressions as faithfully
as the resultant stir of fancy would allow. But I am
also deeply and obviously indebted to several books,
and in particular to the histories of Oxford by Parker,
Maxwell Lyte, and Boase ; to Mr. F. E. Robinson's
series of College Histories ; to Reminiscences of Oxford
and its companion volumes from the Clarendon Press ;
and, above all the rest, to Anthony a Wood, and to
the Rev. Andrew Clark's perfect editions of that writer's
Life and Times^ and of John Aubrey's Brief Lives.
The Editors of The Daily Chronicle, The Illustrated
London News, and Cramf ton's Magazine have kindly
given me permission to reprint a few pages from my
contributions thereto.
EDWARD THOMAS.
Contents
CHAPTER I
PAGE
On entering Oxford ....... i
CHAPTER n
The Stones of Oxford . . . . . . .23
CHAPTER III
Dons Ancient and Modern ...... 69
CHAPTER IV
Undergraduates of the Present and the Past . . loi
CHAPTER V
College Servants of the Present and the Past . . 147
CHAPTER VI
The Oxford Day ........ 165
CHAPTER VII
In a College Garden ....... 207
vii
Oxford
CHAPTER VIII
PAGE
Old Oxford Days . . . . . . . .219
CHAPTER IX
The Oxford Country . . . .
vni
245
CHAPTER X
In Praise of Oxford . . , . . . .255
List of Illustrations
Owner of Original.
1. The Clarendon Building, Mr. Joh?! Ful/ey- Frontispiece
Broad Street love, R.I.
Facing page
2. Oxford, from the Sheldonian Mr. Cecil Turner, M.J. . 6
Theatre
3. Bishop Heber's Tree . Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I. . 8
4. St. Edmund's Hall . „ „ . 12
5. The University Church of ,, ,, .18
St. Mary
6. Iffley Church from the Mr. J. W. Taphouse . 20
South-East
7. Tom Tower, Christ Mr. F. E. Sidney, F.S.J. . 24
Church College
8. St. Giles's, looking towards Rev. George Wharton, M.J. 26
St. Mary Magdalen
(South)
9. Christ Church — Interior of Mr. J. W. Taphouse . 28
Latin Chapel
10. St. Peter's-in-the-East , „ „ , 30
11. University College — Private ,, ,, . 34
Garden of the Master
12. Merton College and St. „ „ . 36
Alban's Hall
ix
Oxford
Owner of Original. Facing page
13. Oriel College . . . The Royal hntitute of 38
Painters in Water-Colours
14. Grove Street . . . Mr. J. W. Taphouse . . 40
15. New College . . . Mr. Jo/?n Fulleylove, R.I. . 42
16. Interior of the Bodleian ,, „ . 44
Library
17. Interior of the Library, All Sir William R. Anson, Bart., 46
Souls' College D.C.L., M.P.
18. The Cloisters, Magdalen Mr. John Fiilleylove, R.I. . 48
College
19. St. John's College . . ,, „ .50
20. Magdalen Tower and Bo- „ „ . 52
tanic Garden
21. Magdalen Tower and Bridge ,, „ . 54
22. All Souls' College and the Mr. F. P. Osmaston, M.J. 56
High Street
23. Interior of the Sheldonian Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I. . 58
Theatre
24. Corpus Christi College . „ „ . 60
25. Christ Church — Peckwater Mr. J. IT. Taphouse. . 62
(Quadrangle
26. The RadclifFe Library, or Mr. Henry Silver . . 64
Camera Bodleiana, from
All Souls' College
27. Entrance Gateway of Hert- Mr. J. W. Taphouse . 66
ford College and the
RadclifFe Library
28. Interior of the Cathedral of Mr. James Orrock, R.I. . 68
Christ Church
29. Magdalen College, from the Mr. J. W. Taphouse . 72
Botanic Garden
3{
List of Illustrations
30. The RadclifFe Library, or
Camera Bodleiana, from
Brasenose College Quad-
rangle
31. Bishop King's House . Mr.
32. The Clarendon Building, Mr.
looking East
33. All Saints' Church, from Dr.
Turl Street
34. Trinity College . . Dr.
35. Interior of the Library of Mr.
Merton College
36. Christ Church College — Mr.
Tom Quadrangle
37. Holywell Church . . Mr.
38. The Bathing Sheds, or
" Parsons' Pleasure "
39. Interior of the Hall, Mag- Mr.
dalen College
40. A " Study " in the Bodleian Mr.
Library
41. The Tom Quadrangle,
Christ Church, from the
South Entrance
42. Corpus Christi College and
Merton Tower, from
Christ Church Meadows
43. The Entrance to Queen's
College from Logic Lane
44. Exeter College Chapel, from
Ship Street
xi
Owner of Original.
Mr. He?iry Silver
Facing page
80
"John Fulk'^iove, R.I.
Henry Silver
A. Hugh Thomson
George Gar lick .
J. IV. Taphouse
Edgar J. El good, M.J
John Pulley love, R.I.
James Or rock, R.I.
John Fulleylove, R.I.
82
86
92
96
98
104
1 12
1 20
136
138
156
158
Mr. Horace Field,
. 162
F.R.I. B.J.
Mr. J. W. Taphouse
. 172
Oxford
Owner of Original. Facing page
45. Entrance to the Divinity Mr. Jolm Fulkylove, R.I. . 178
School
46. The River Isis . . . „ „ .184
47. The Sheldonian Theatre „ „ .188
and Old Clarendon
Buildings
48. Jesus College . . . „ ,, . 200
49. Fellows' Garden, Exeter Mr. J. fV. Taphouse . 210
College
0. In Trinity College Gardens The Rev. Arthur H. Stan- 214
to?i, M.J.
1. The Fellows' Garden, Mer- Mr. Jolm Ful/eylove, R.I. . 216
ton College
2. The Library, Oriel College Mr. C. F. Be//, M.J. . 224
3. Magdalen College Tower, Mr. John Ful/ey/ove, R.I. . 226
from the Meadows
4. The Cloisters, New College Mr. James Orroc/:, R.I. . 232
5. Broad Street, looking West Mr. Wa/ter S. S. Tyrzvhitt, 238
M.J.
6. The High Street looking Mr. J. T. Ho/Zingsworth . 240
East
7. The Botanic Garden. . Mr. Christopher Bradshaw . 242
8. Oxford, from South Hinksey Mr. J. W. Taphouse . 248
9. Oxford from Headington „ „ .250
Hill
60. The Old Ashraolean Mr. John Fu//ey/ove, R.I. . 260
Museum and Sheldonian
Theatre
xu
ON ENTERING OXFORD
CHAPTER I
ON ENTERING OXFORD
Passing rapidly through London, with its roar of
causes that have been won, and the suburbs, where
they have no causes, and skirting the willowy Thames,
— glassy or silver, or with engrailed grey waves
— and brown ploughlands, elm-guarded, solitary, I
approached Oxford. Nuneham woods made one
great shadow on the land, one great shadow on the
Thames, According to an old custom, it rained. But
rain takes away nothing from Oxford save a few nice
foot passengers. It transmutes the Franciscan habit of
the city to a more Dominican cast ; and if the foil of
sky be faintly lighted, the rain becomes a visible
beatitude.
One by one the churches of St. Mary the Virgin
and All Saints', and the pleasant spire of the Cathedral,
appear ; with the dome of the RadclifFe Camera, Tom
Tower of Christ Church, and that old bucolic tower
of Robert d'Oigli's castle on the west. For a minute
several haystacks, a gasometer, and the engine smoke
replace them. But already that one cameo from
3
Oxford
February's hand has painted and lit and garnished
again that city within the heart, which is Oxford. I
think, when I see an old woodcut of a patron holding
his towered foundation in his hand, about to bestow it
as a gift, — as William of Wykeham is depicted, holding
Winchester, — that even so Oxford gives to us the
stones of church and college, the lawns and shrubs of
gardens, and the waters of Isis, to be stored in the
chambers of the soul — " Mother of Arts ! "
Mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
So ran my thoughts and Milton's verse ; and
possessed, as it is easy to become in such a place, with
its great beauty, thinking of its great renown, my mind
went naturally on in the channel of that same stream of
verse, while I saw the Christ Church groves, the
Hinksey Hills, and the grey Isis —
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the Summer long ;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing ; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream.
But the dark entry to the city, on the western
side, suddenly changed my thoughts. It is well known.
It is the most contemptible in Europe. It consists of
a hoarding, a brewery, and suitable appurtenances. Of
more recent date is the magnificent marmalade shop,
4
On Entering Oxford
the most conspicuous building in Oxford. On the
north and east the approach is not worse, consisting, as
it does, of sermons in brick, arranged in perfectly
successful imitation of Tooting. On the south the
fields are melancholy in apprehension of a similar fate.
In short, one ignorant of the city might believe that he
was approaching the hub of the universe.
Then, the Norman tower appeared again, and the
afforested castle mound rose up. A bell, and many
bells, began to sound. The present vanished in charge
of a westward-going motor car, containing three gentle-
men with cigars and a lady ; and the past, softer than
the cooing of doves and more compelling than organ
music, came with the twilight from the tower of St.
Michael's church.
At sunset or at dawn the city's place in the world,
as a beautiful thing, is clearest. Few cities look other
than sad at those hours ; many, unless hid in their
own smoke, look cheap. Oxford becomes part of the
magic of sunset and dawn, — is, as it were, gathered
into the bosom of the power that is abroad. Yet, if it
is one with the hills and the clouds and the silence, the
human dignity of the place is also significant. The
work of the ancient architect conspires with that of the
sunset and of long, pregnant tracts of time ; and I
know not whether to thank, for the beauty of the place,
its genius or perhaps the divinest series of accidents
that have ever agreed to foster the forward-looking
designs of men. In the days when what is admirable
in Oxford was built, the builder made no pretence to
5
Oxford
please his neighbour. He made what he loved. In
many cases he was probably indifferent to everything
else. But the genius of the place took care ; and only
the recent architects who have endeavoured to work in
harmony with the place have failed. There is a gentle
and puissant harmonising influence in Oxford which
nothing can escape. I am no lover of Georgian
architecture and am often blind to the power of Wren ;
but in Oxford I have no such incapacities ; and I believe
that here architecture should be judged, not as Norman
or classical, as the work of Wolsey or Aldrich, but as
Oxford architecture. The library at Christ Church, or
any other work of the eighteenth century, seems to me
as divine a thing, though as yet it lacks the complete
unction of antiquity, as Mob Quad at Merton or
Magdalen Tower. To pass from the Norman work of
St. Peter's in the East to the Palladianism of Peckwater
quadrangle, is but to descend from one to another of
the same honourable race. If certain extremely new
edifices wear out a thousand years they will probably be
worthy of reverence at the end of that time, and be in
harmony with Merton chapel and Balliol hall at once.
Nothing is so deserving, few things so exacting, of
respect, from transitory men as age. Things change,
and improvements are questioned or questionable ; but,
for me, age is as good as an improvement ; and Oxford
honours what is old with particular dignities and graces ;
under her influence the work of age is at once blander
and more swift.
But this gentle tyranny, — as of the Mother of
6
OXFORD, FROM THE SHELDONIAN
THEATRE
On the extreme left of the picture shows the roof of
the Schools ; the dome of the Radcliffe Library, St.
Mary's tower and spire, and Merton tower, occupying
the centre of the picture.
To the right, over part of Brasenose College, are the
elm trees of the Broad Walk. In the foreground
are the pinnacles and roof of the Bodleian Library. ^
The view is from the Cupola of the Sheldonian
Theatre, looking south on a stormy day.
On Entering Oxford
Christ, who, in Leonardo's picture, unites angel and
holy child and St. John with outspread hands, —
is exerted not only upon the stones, but also upon
the people of the place. A man may at Oxford
rejoice in the company of another whom it is a
self-sacrifice to meet elsewhere. He finds himself
marvelling that one who was merely a gentleman in
London can be interesting in Long Wall Street or on
the Cherwell. The superb, expensive young man who
thinks that there is " practically nobody in Oxford " —
the poor, soiled scholar — the exuberant, crimson-lipped
athlete, whose stride is a challenge, his voice a trumpet
call — the lean and larded aesthete, busily engaged upon
the quaint designs of oriental life, — all discover some
point in common when they are seen together in the
Schools, or on the riverside.
I was never more effectually reminded of this
Oxford magic than when I heard the City Band playing
opposite University one day. I was indifferent, and
for the time ignorant and incapable of knowing, whether
the music was that of Wagner or Sousa. It seemed to
me the music of Apollo, certainly of some one grander
than all grand composers. And yet, as I was informed,
what I had entirely loved was from an inferior opera
which every street boy can improve.
It was another music, and yet symphonious, that I
heard, when I came again to Addison's Walk at
Magdalen. I stopped at Magdalen cloisters on my
way —
Oxford
O blessed shades ! O gentle cool retreat
From all th' immoderate Heat
In which the frantic World does burn and sweat ! —
Let any one who has laughed at Oxford discipline,
or criticised her system of education, go there in the
morning early and be abased before the solemnity of
that square lawn ; and should he be left with a desire
to explain anything, let him take up his abode with
the stony mysterious beasts gathered around that lawn.
I like that grass amidst the cloisters because it is truly
common. No one, I hope and believe, except a
gardener, an emblem, is permitted to walk thereon.
It belongs to me and to you and to the angels. Such
an emerald in such a setting is a fit symbol of the
university, and its privy seal.
It is still unnecessary to pass an examination before
entering Addison's walk. It is therefore unfrequented.
A financier made a pretty sum one Midsummer -day
by accepting gratuities from all the strangers who
came to its furthest point — " a custom older than King
Alfred." But, although they are not vulgarly so called,
these walks are the final school of the Platonist. It is
an elucidation of the Phasdo to pace therein. That
periwinkle-bordered pathway is the place of long
thoughts that come home with circling footsteps again
and again. It is the home of beech and elm, and of
whatsoever that is beautiful and wise and stately dwells
among beech and elm.
More than one college history is linked with a tree.
Lincoln College reverently entreats the solitary plane
BISHOP HEBER'S TREE
To the left are seen the steps leading to the Radclift'e
Library, over which appears a portion of the buildings
of Brasenose College, divided by a lane from the
gardens of Exeter College, in which the Bishop planted
the chestnut tree named after him.
The spire of Exeter Chapel shows to the right.
The iron railings surround the RadclifFe Library.
On Entering Oxford
tree. William of Waynfleet commanded that Magdalen
College should be built over against the oak that fell
after six hundred years of life a century ago. Sir
Thomas White was " warned in a dream " to build a
college at a place where there stood a triple elm tree.
Hence arose St. John's College. Two hundred years
ago the tree was known to exist, and there is ground
for the pious belief that a scion still flourishes there.
Nowhere is green so wonderful as at Magdalen or
Trinity. But their sweetness is no more than the
highest expression of the privacy of Oxford. Turn
aside at the gate that lies nearest your path ; enter ;
and you will find a cloister or cloistral calm, free from
wolf and ass. " The walks at these times," said a
vacation visitor, " are so much one's own — the tall trees
of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The halls deserted,
and with open doors inviting one to slip in unperceived,
and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal
Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait
seems to smile upon their overlooked beadsman and
to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in
by the way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of
antique hospitaHty ; the immense caves of kitchens,
kitchen fire-places, cordial recesses ; ovens where the
first pies were baked four centuries ago ; and spits
which have cooked for Chaucer ! Not the meanest
minister among the dishes but is hallowed to me
through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a
Manciple." With a little effrontery and an English
accent you may enjoy the inmost bowers of the Fellows
9
Oxford
or, Si qua est ea gloria^ gather fruit from the espahers
of the president. The walls are barricaded only with
ivy, or wallflower, or the ivy-leaved toadflax and its
delicate bells. But the stranger never learns that the
seclusion of Oxford is perennial, and that only in the
vacations may he sufi^er from what the old pun calls
■porta eburna. The place is habitually almost deserted,
except by the ghosts of the dead. Returning to it,
when friends are gone, and every one is a stranger, the
echoes of our footsteps in the walls are as the voices of
our dead selves ; we are among the ghosts ; the past
is omnipotent, even terrible. Echoes, quotes Montaigne,
are the spirits of the dead, and among these mouldering
stones we may put our own interpretation upon that.
And no one that has so returned, or that comes a
reverent stranger for the first time to Oxford, can read
without deep intelligence the lines which are put into
the mouth of Lacordaire in " lonica " : —
Lost to the Church and deaf to me, this town
Yet wears the reverend garniture of peace.
Set in a land of trade, like Gideon's fleece
Bedewed where all is dry ; the Pope may frown ;
But, if this city is the shrine of youth.
How shall the Preacher lord of virgin souls.
When by glad streams and laughing lawns he strolls,
How can he bless them not ? Yet in sad sooth.
When I would love those English gownsmen, sighs
Heave my frail breast, and weakness dims mine eyes.
These strangers heed me not — far off in France
Are young men not so fair, and not so cold.
My listeners. Were they here, their greeting glance
Might charm me to forget that I were old.
Some time ago I went into a grey quadrangle, filled
lO
On Entering Oxford
with gusty light and the crimson of creeper -leaves,
tremulous or already in flight. A tall poplar, the
favourite of the months from April to October, was
pensively distributing its foliage upon the grass. There,
the leaves became invisible, because of brilliant frost,
and in a high attic I heard once again the laud or
summons or complaint of bells. That was All Saints';
that, St. Mary's ; that, the Cathedral's ; and that was
their blended after-tone, seeming to come from the sky.
Each bell had its own character or mood, sometimes
constant, sometimes changing with the weather of the
night. One, for example, spoke out sullenly and
ceased, as if to return to musing that had been pain-
fully interrupted. Another bell seemed to take deep
joy in its frequent melodious duty — like some girl
seated alone in her bower at easy toil, now and then
lifting her head, and with her embroidery upon her
knee, chanting joys past and present and yet to come.
Once again I felt the mysterious pleasure of being in
an elevated Oxford chamber at night, among cloud and
star, — so that I seemed to join in the inevitable motion
of the planets, — and as I saw the sea of roofs and
horned turrets and spires I knew that, although
architecture is a dead language, here at least it speaks
strongly and clearly, pompous as Latin, subtle as Greek.
I used to envy the bell-ringers on days of ancient
festival or recent victory, and cannot wonder that old
Anthony a Wood should have noted the eight bells of
Merton as he came home from antiquarian walks, and
would often ring those same bells " for recreation's
1 1
Oxford
sake." When their sound is dead it is sweet to enter
that peacefuUest and homeliest of churchyards, St.
Peter's in the East, overlooked by St. Edmund's Hall
and Queen's College and the old city wall. There is a
peace which only the thrush and blackbird break, and
even their singing is at length merely the most easily
distinguishable part of the great melody of the place.
Most of the graves are so old or so forgotten that it is
easy — and in Spring it is difficult not — to perceive a
kind of dim reviving life among the stones, where, as
in some old, quiet books, the names live again a purged
and untroubled existence.
In Oxford nothing is the creation of one man or of
one year. Every college and church and garden is the
work of centuries of men and time. Many a stone
reveals an octave of colour that is the composition of a
long age. The founder of a college laid his plans ; in
part, perhaps he fixed them in stone. His successors
continued the work, and without haste, without con-
tempt of the future or ignorance of the past, helped
the building to ascend unto complete beauty by means
of its old and imperfect selves. The Benedictine
Gloucester ' House of 1283 has grown by strange
methods into the Worcester College of to-day. The
Augustinian Priory site is now occupied by Wadham.
St. Alban's Hall is no more ; but its lamp — " Stubbin's
moon " — is a light in a recess of Merton. Wolsey
drew upon the bank of old foundations for the muni-
ficence which is still his renown. A chantry for the
comfort of departed souls became a kind of scholarship.
12
ST. EDMUND'S HALL
The picture shows the north wall of the Hall, pierced
with windows looking on to the graveyard of St.
Peter's in the East.
The confused mass of chimneys and dormer windows
give a picturesque appearance to this side of the Hall.
New College Gardens lie beyond the wall running
across the picture.
On Entering Oxford
Duke Humphrey's library was the nest from which
Bodley's august collection overflowed ; the very timber
of the Bodleian was in part Merton's gift. No city
preserves the memory and signature of so many men.
The past and the dead have here, as it were, a corporate
life. They are an influence, an authority ; they create
and legislate to-day. Everything in the present might
have been foretold, and in fact existed in some latent
form, in the past, as Merlin was said to have foretold
the migration of Oxford scholars from Cricklade, i.e.
Greeklade. Therefore, in Oxford alone, as I walk, I
seem to be in the living past. The oldest thing is
not as in most places a curiosity. Since it is told of
Oxford, the story is not lightly to be discredited,
that Ludovicus Vives, who was sent as professor of
rhetoric by Wolsey, was welcomed by a swarm of bees,
and that they, " to signify the incomparable sweetness
of his eloquence," settled under the leads of his study
at Corpus Christi College, and there for a hundred
and thirty years continued, until they dispersed out of
sorrow for the fallen Stuart family. When dawn arrives
to the student, after a night among books, and the
towers and spires seem to be just fresh from the
acting of some stately drama ; or at nightfall, when
the bells ring as he comes, joyful and tired, home
from the west, — then the city and all its component
ages speak out, as if the past were but a fine memory,
richly stored and ordered.
Once, answering the call of one of those bells that
are to a scholar as a trumpet to a soldier, I found
13
Oxford
myself at a service that had in it elements older than
Oxford. I was surely at a Greek festival. The genial,
flushed, slightly grotesque faces of the College fellows
contrasted with the white children of the choir, very
much as the swarthy faun with the young god in
Titian's " Bacchus and Ariadne." The notes of the
choristers and of the organ were moulded to finer
results by the severe decorations of the carven stone
around and above. When one sang alone, it was as it
had been a dove floating to the windows and away,
away. There were parts of the music so faint and so
exquisitely blended that the twenty voices were but as
the sound of a reverberating bell. A voice of baser
metal read the lesson with a melancholy dignity that
made the words at once pleasing and unintelligible.
When the last surplice had floated past the exit, the
worshippers looked a little pained and confused, as if
doubting whether they had not assisted some beautiful
rash heresy. Turning into High Street, I was rudely
called back from a fantastic visit to Tempe, by the
wind and rain of every day. The usual pageant of
study and pleasure was passing up and down.
Here was a smiling gentleman, red as the opening
morn, with black clothes, white tie, — one who scoffs at
everything but gout. He notes in the fragrance of his
favourite dishes omens of greater import than augurs
used to read from sacrificial victims.
Here was a pale seraph, his eyes commercing with
the sky. He has taken every possible prize. Nobody
but his friends can think that he is uninteresting.
14
On Entering Oxford
Here was a little, plain-featured, gentle ascetic, one
of the " last enchantments of the middle ages " that are
to be seen still walking about Oxford. Five hundred
years ago he might have ridden, " coy as a maid," to
Canterbury and told "the clerk of Oxford's tale."
Now, the noises of the world are too much for him,
and he murmurs among his trees —
How safe, methinks, and strong behind
These trees have I encamped my mind,
Where beauty aiming at the heart,
Bends in some tree its useless dart,
And where the world no certain shot
Can make, or me it toucheth not.
But I on it securely play.
And gall its horsemen all the day.
Bind me, ye woodbines in your twines.
Curl me about, ye gadding vines.
And oh so close your circles lace.
That I may never leave this place !
Here was a youth not much past seventeen. In his
face the welt schmerz contends with the pride in his
last bon mot. He is a wide and subtle reader ; he has
contributed to the halfpenny press. He has materialised
spirits and moved objects at a distance. In the world,
there is little left for him except repose and weak tea.
Here was one that might be a monk and might
equally well be St. Michael, with flashing eyes and high
white forehead that catches a light from beyond the
dawn and glows. He is a splendour among men
as he walks in the crowd of high churchmen, low
churchmen, broad churchmen, nonconformists, and
men who on Sunday wear bowler hats.
15
Oxford
Here was a shy don, married to Calliope — a brilliant
companion — one who shares a wisdom as deep and
almost as witty as Montaigne's, with a few fellows of
colleges, and ever murmuring " Codex."
Here was one, watched over alike by the Muses
and the Graces ; honey-tongued ; athletic ; who would
rather spend a life in deciding between the Greek and
Roman ideals than in ruling Parliament and being ruled
by society. He strode like a Plantagenet. When he
stood still he was a classical Hermes.
Here was a Blue " with shy but conscious look " ;
and there the best of all Vices.
Here was a youth, with gaudy tie, who believed
that he was leading a bull-dog, but showed a wise
acquiescence in the intricate canine etiquette. May his
dog not cease before him.
Here was a martial creature, walking six miles an
hour, pensively, in his master's gown. His beard,
always blown over his shoulder, has been an inspiration
to generations of undergraduates, and, with his bellying
gown, gives him a resemblance to Boreas or Notus.
Probably because the able novelist has not visited
Oxford, men move about its streets more naively and
with more expression in their faces than anywhere else
in the world. There you may do anything but carry a
walking-stick. (As I write, fashion has changed her
mind, and walking-sticks of the more flippant kinds
are commonly in use.) There are therefore more
unmasked faces in half of Turl Street than in the
whole of the Strand. Almost every one appears to have
i6
On Entering Oxford
a sense of part proprietorship in the city ; walks as if he
were in his own garden ; has no fear lest he should be
caught smiling to himself, or, as midnight approaches,
even singing loudly to himself. A don will not
hesitate to make the worst joke in a strong and
cheerful voice in the bookseller's shop, when it is full
of clever freshmen.
Yonder they go, the worldly and the unworldly, the
rich and poor, high and low, proving that Oxford is
one of the most democratic places in Europe. The lax
discipline that broadens the horizon of the inexpert
stranger is probably neither unwise nor unpremeditated.
It is certainly not inconsistent with the genius of a city
whose very stones may be supposed to have acquired
an educative faculty, and a sweet presence that is not to
be put by. No fool ever went up without becoming
at least a coxcomb before he came down. In no place
are more influences brought to bear upon the mind,
though it is emphatically a place where a man is
expected to educate himself. A man is apt to feel on
first entering Oxford, and still more on leaving it, that
the beautiful city is unfortunate in having but mortal
minds to teach. There is a keen and sometimes
pathetic sense of a great music which one cannot wholly
follow, a light unapprehended, a wisdom not realised.
Yet much is to be guessed at or privily understood,
when we behold St. Mary's spire, marvellously attended,
and crowned, when the night is one sapphire, by
Cassiopeia. And the ghosts take shape — the cowled,
mitred, mail -coated, sceptred company of founders,
17 2
THE UNIVERSITY CHURCH OF
ST. MARY
The podium and part of one ot the Doric columns of
the Canterbury Gate of Christ Church show at the
extreme left of the picture.
The lantern of the RadclifFe Library appears between
the column and the picturesque house covered with
greenery, above which rises the tower and spire of St.
Mary's, the University Church.
Between this house and a lower building — St.
Mary's Hall — runs St. Mary's Hall Lane, emerging
into "the High" opposite the porch of St. Mary's
Church.
The buildings on the extreme right of the picture
are those belonging to Oriel College.
On Entering Oxford
with jests and fancies that disenthroned all powers except
fantasy and adventure and mirth. Out of doors, at
Yarnton or Cumnor or Tew, he seemed near kinsman
to the sun and the south wind, so that for a time we
were one with them, with a sense of mystery and of
pride. And, whether in or out of doors, he loved the
night, because her hands were soft, and he found the
shadows infernis hilares sine regibus, as in the world of
Saturn. He would hail the morn as he saw her from
a staircase window with " Sweet cousin " and such
follies ; and would go into the chapel on summer
evenings without a candle to see prophet and apostle
lit by the tender beam. He wrote, and never printed,
much verse. When I look at it now, I wonder in what
language it was conceived, and where the key is hidden,
and by what shores and forests to-day, men speak or
dream it. The verses seem to maturer eyes but as
crude translations out of silence. Yet in the old days
we called him sometimes the Last, sometimes the First,
of the Bards, so nimble and radiant was his spirit. He
seemed one that might have written Tamerlane in his
youth, after a pot of sack with Shakespeare at the
*' Crown " in Cornmarket Street. I know not whether
to call him immemorially old or young. He had
touches of the golden age, and as it were a tradition
from the singer who was in that ship which
First through the Euxine seas bore all the flower of Greece.
Unlike other clever people in Oxford he was brilliant
in early morning ; would rise and talk and write at
19
IFFLEY CHURCH FROM THE SOUTH-EAST
The massive Norman tower of the Church shows to
the left of the picture, the chancel extending eastward
to the right.
A yew tree — perhaps of the same age as the Church
— covers part of the building, serving to throw into
relief the remains of a cross, the shaft and base of
which are ancient.
On Entering Oxford
Oh, to the sad how pleasant thy age, to the joyous
how admirable thy youth ! Yet to the wise, perhaps,
thou art neither young nor old, but eternal ; and not
so much beautiful as Beauty herself, masked as Cybele !
And perhaps, oh sweet and wise and solemn mother,
thou wilt not hear unkindly thy latest froward courtier,
or at least will let him pass unnoticed, since one that
speaks of thee,
" Cannot dispraise without a kind of praise.
Or will it more delight thee to be praised in a tongue
that is out of time, as thou seemest out of space
and time ? —
"Vive Midae gazis et Lydo ditior auro
Troica et Euphratea super diademata felix,
Quem non ambigui fasces, non mobile vulgus,
Non leges, non castra tenent, qui pectore magno
Spemque metumque domas. Nos, vilia turba, caducis
Deservire bonis semperque optare parati,
Spargimur in casus. Celsa tu mentis ab arce
Despicis errantes, humanaque gaudia rides."
21
THE STONES OF OXFORD
23
TOM TOWER, CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE
The palisade enclosing the graveyard of St. Aldate's
Church is on the .left ; some of the buildings of
Pembroke College appear to the right.
The gateway in the centre of the picture is the
west entrance to Christ Church from St. Aldate's, and
leads into the Fountain Quadrangle. The tower, to
the level of the finial of the ogee-headed window, is
of the date of Wolsey's foundation ; the remaining part
was added by Sir Christopher Wren.
CHAPTER II
THE STONES OF OXFORD
Quia lapis de pariete clamabit, et lignum,
quod inter juncturas aedificiorum est, respondebit.
Standing at Carfax, and occasionally moving a step
to one side or another, I see with my eyes, indeed, the
west front of Christ Church, with Tom Tower ; the
borders of All Saints' and St. Mary's ; and that grim
tower of St. Michael's ; and the handsome curves of
High Street and St. Aldate's, which are part of the mere
good fortune of Oxford : but, especially if a dawn
light recall the first dim shining, or a sunset recall the
grey and golden splendour of its maturity, I may also
see the past of the University unrolled again. For at
Carfax I am in sight of monuments on which is implied
or recorded all its history. On the south, above Folly
Bridge, is the gravelly reach that formed the eponymous
ford ; between that and Christ Church was the old
south gate ; and, through Wolsey's gateway, lies the
Cathedral, speaking of St. Frideswide, the misty, original
founder, — King's daughter, virgin, martyr, saint, — and,
with its newly revealed Norman crypt, which perhaps
25
Oxford
held the University chest in the beginning, represen-
tative of Oxford's piety and generosity. On the east,
in the High Street, University College and St, Mary's
and Brasenose speak clearly, although falsely, of King
Alfred. There, by St. Peter's in the East, was the old
east gate ; and in sight of these is Merton, the fount
of the collegiate idea. On the north, in Cornmarket
Street, St. Michael's marks the place of the north gate,
and while it is one of the oldest, is by far the oldest-
looking place in Oxford, rising up always to our
surprise, like a piece of substantial night left by the
dark ages, yet clothed with green in June. On the
west, the Castle tower, twin made with St. Michael's
by the first Norman lord of Oxford, lies by the old
west gate ; and the quiet, monstrous mound beyond
recalls the days of King Alfred's daughter's supremacy
in Mercia. At Carfax itself there is still a St. Martin's
church, a descendant of the one whose bells in the
Middle Ages and again in the seventeenth century,
called the city to arms against the University, but long
ago deprived of its insolent height of tower, because
the citizens pelted the scholars therefrom.
Moved by the presence of a city whose strange
beauty was partly interpreted from these vigorous
hieroglyphics, mediasval and later men, who had the
advantage of living before history was invented, framed
for it a divine or immensely ancient origin. Even
kings, or such as quite certainly existed, were deemed
unworthy to be the founders. We believe now that
the first mention of Oxford was as an inconsiderable
26
ST. GILES'S, LOOKING TOWARDS ST.
MARY MAGDALEN (SOUTH)
Some picturesque houses on the left lead to the
entrance of St. John's College, seen through the trees.
Farther on appears the tower of the Church of St.
Mary Magdalen in Cornmarket. The mass to the
extreme right above the cab shelter is part of the west
side of St. Giles's and the houses surrounding the
Taylor Institution and new Ashmolean Museum.
The posts and rails in the foreground enclose a
grassed space in front of St. Giles's Church.
The time is sunset in summer.
The Stones of Oxford
but progressive township in the reign of Edward the
Elder, Alfred's son : but those old lovers attributed to
Alfred the restoration of a university that was in his
time old and honoured ; and some said that he endowed
three doctors of grammar, arts, and theology, there ;
others, less precise than those who put the foundation
of Cambridge at 4317 b.c, discovered that Oxford was
founded by the Trojans who (as used to be well known)
came to Britain from their burning city. But to Oxford
the Trojans brought certain Greek philosophers, and at
that early date illustrated the universal hospitality and
independence of nationality and language that were so
characteristic, before the place became a Stuart park.
And as the Athenians had in their city and its attendant
landscape all those natural beauties and utilities which
make possible a peerless academy, so also had the
Britons, says Anthony a Wood, herein agreeing with
Polydore Vergil, " when by a remnant of the Grecians,
that came amongst them, they or their successors
selected such a place in Britain to plant a school or
schools therein, which for its pleasant situation was
afterwards called Bellositmn or Bellosite, now Oxford."
Among these generous suppositions or dreams was the
story that Apollo, at the downfall of the Olympians,
flying now to Rome and now to Athens, found at last
something congenial in the brown oak woods and
silver waters of Oxford, and a bride in the puissant
nymph of Isis ; on which favoured site, as was
fitting, there afterwards arose a place, with the learn-
ing and architectural beauty of Athens, the divine
27
Oxford
inspiration of Delphi, and the natural loveliness of
Delos . . .
There is, said Anthony a Wood, " an old tradition
that goeth from father to son of our inhabitants, which
much derogateth from the antiquity of this city — and
that is : When Frideswyde had bin soe long absent
from hence, she came from Binsey (triumphing with
her virginity) into the city mounted on a milk-white ox
betokening innocency ; and as she rode along the streets,
she would forsooth be still speaking to her ox, ' Ox
forth,' 'Ox forth' or (as 'tis related) '•bos perge'' (that
is, ' ox goe on,' or ' ox (goe on) forth ') — and hence
they indiscreetly say that our city was from thence
called Oxforth or Oxford."
But there has never been composed a quite appro-
priately magnificent legend that could be received by
the faithful as the canonical fiction for Oxford, as the
Aeneid is for Rome ; and now there can never be.
There is, however, still a pleasant haze (that might
encourage a poet or a herald) suspended over the early
history of Oxford. It is unlikely that the place was of
importance in Roman times ; later, its position on a
river and a boundary brought it many sufferings at the
hands of Dane and Saxon. But no one need fear to
believe that, early in the eighth century, Didan, an under
king, and his daughter Frideswide established there a
nunnery and built a church of stone, now perhaps mingled
with the later masonry. It was rebuilt by Ethelred in the
eleventh century with a quite exceptional fineness in the
Saxon workmanship ; and was girdled by the churches
28
CHRIST CHURCH— INTERIOR OF LATIN
CHAPEL
The Shrine of St. Frideswide appears in the middle
of the picture, standing in one of the eastern bays of
the north wall of the choir. The north side of the
Shrine is seen, together with the ancient wooden
watching-chaniber above.
A tomb shows between the column and the
seventeenth-century reading-desk at the right of the
picture, also a glimpse of the choir.
The carved oak stall front immediately under the
Shrine is probably of the time of Wolsey, and part of
the furniture of his choir.
To the left is the east window of the Chapel —
filled with stained glass representing scenes in the life
of St. Frideswide, designed by Sir Edward Burne-
Jones, Bart., and executed by Mr. William Morris.
The two figures represent a visitor to the shrine of
the saint and a verger.
The Stones of Oxford
of St. Martin, St. George, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Mary
the Virgin, St. Ebbe, St. Michael, and St. Peter in the
East ; and the last two, to one who had stood at Carfax
in iioo, would still be recognised, if he visited the
shadowed doorway and stern crypt of the one, and the
tower of the other, though he might look in vain for
what he knew in "The Seven Deadly Sins lane" and
elsewhere.
Whatever learning then flourished in the city is now
to be found in its architecture, in Prior Philip's book
on the miracles of St. Frideswide, and in the inestimable
atmosphere of the place. We can guess that there was
much that is worthy to be known, from the eloquent
monkish figures of the corbels in Christ Church chapter-
house ; and can wistfully think of the wisdom that was
uttered in Beaumont, the royal palace and learned
resort, whose gardens lay at Broken Hays and near
Worcester College ; and in Osney Abbey, whose bells
— Hautclere, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel
et John — made music that was known to the Eynsham
abbot on May evenings, when it was a rich, calm
retreat, and not as now, a shadowy outline and a
sorrowful heap of stones beyond the railway station.
More than the ghost of the abbey survives in the sketch
of its ruined but still noble walls, in the background of
that picture of its last abbot, in a window of the south
choir aisle at Christ Church.
Before the Conquest Oxford had been visited by
parliaments and kings ; it now began to be honoured
by learning and art. Olim truncus erani ....
29
Oxford
maluit esse deum. It had often been violated or
burned ; in Doomsday Book it appears as a half desolate
city, despite the churches ; but it had already begun,
though again checked by fire that flew among the
wooden houses with such ghastly ease, to assume the
proportions and the grace which were fostered by
William of Wykeham and a hundred of the great
unknown, and in the last few years by Aldrich and Wren
and Jones, — crowned by the munificence of Radcliff*e,
— illuminated with green and white and gold and purple
by the unremembered and by Reynolds, Morris, and
Burne-Jones. The Saxon work at St. Frideswide's was
superseded or veiled by the Norman architects ; the
fine old pillars were in part altered or replaced ; and
the relics of the Saint herself were transferred cere-
moniously and " with all the sweet odours and spices
imaginable," to a more imposing place of rest. Upon
the base of the old fortifications probably now rose the
bastions of the mediasval city wall, once so formidable
but now defensive only against time, and unable any
longer to make history, but only poetry, as they stand
peacefully and muffled with herbage in New College
Gardens, or at Merton or Pembroke, or by the church-
yard of St. Peter's in the East.
The history of that age in Oxford is indistinct, and
recorded events therein have a suddenness, for modern
readers, which is vivid and fascinating, but to the
historian at least, painful and false. And so the birth
of the University, in the midst of darkness and noise, is
to us to-day a melodious sudden cry. It is as if a voice,
30
ST. P£TER'S-IN-THE-EAST
To the extreme right of the picture, through a huge
buttress on the south side of the chancel, is pierced
the doorway to the twelfth-century crypt, extending
some 36 feet under the chancel of the Church.
To the west of this buttress, in the angle formed
by another buttress, appear the remains of a Norman
arca<iing, broken through for the insertion of the
early fifteenth-century window. The windows of the
nave showing in the picture are also of this date, as
is the south porch.
It will be noted that this porch has a room over
it — probably the lodgings of a priest. Across the
graveyard and Oueen's Lane to the west are the
buildings of Queen's College ; to the immediate left
of the yew tree in the centre of the picture shows
the east end of the Chapel ; more to the north the
dome of the campanile appears.
To the extreme left of the graveyard shows a portion
of the ivy-covered north wall of St. Edmund's Hall
(see other picture).
The Stones of Oxford
unexpectedly arose, calling — and the words are said to
have been used by two poor Irish students in an ignorant
and worldly land — " Here is wisdom for sale ! Come,
buy ! " We know that famous lecturers from the
continental universities came ; but not with what
eloquence and applause they spoke. It may confidently
be surmised that there was something sweet to learned
minds in the air or tradition of the place. The walls
are fallen or forgotten that heard the prelusive lectures
of Pullein and Vacarius ; and the brilliant Franciscan
house in St. Benedict's is chiefly known by its influence
in the founding of Balliol, and by the greatest school-
men, its alumni. But if we go to the grey domestic
little lodgings, with " arms and rebusses that are depicted
and cut in stone over each door," vestiges of a
Benedictine scholastic house, at Worcester College, we
may fancifully pierce beyond John Giffard's foundation
and the preceding Carmelites, to the earliest lovers of
learning who loved Oxford too. At St. Mary's the
work of the fancy is easier and more sure. There the
University books, and there a money chest, reposed.
There were the highest deliberations and ceremonies.
There a man was graduated, and from its porch he
passed out a clerk of Oxford.
If the University was early associated with a place of
holiness and beauty, still more firmly was it rooted in a
becoming poverty. It had neither a roof nor a certain
purse. For years it had not a name. The University
was in fact but a spirit of wisdom and grace ; men had
heard of it and sought it ; and where one or two were
31
Oxford
gathered together to take advantage of it, there was
her school and her only endowment. Now and then
to such a group came in a legacy of books or gold.
But that was a crop for which no one sowed, and before
it was possible, it had been rumoured that there was
something in Oxford not visible, yet very present and
necessary ; and scholars came with as great zeal as was
ever cherished by reports of gold. They brought what
in their devotion they came to seek. Thus Gerald of
Wales came, and for three days read aloud his glorious
book to large audiences. Every day was marked by
sumptuous and generous feasts. It was, indeed, " a
costly and noble act," as he says himself, "for the
authentic and ancient times of the poets were thus in
some measure renewed." Carmelites, Dominicans, and
Franciscans, and vivid men from the University of Paris,
came to teach. Even then, the University quarrelled
with the town over the price of victuals and rooms, and
invaded the extortionate Jew. There, about the streets,
walked the magnificent Franciscans, Roger Bacon and
Grosseteste, and the pure and gracious and learned St.
Thomas Cantelupe.
Early in the nineteenth century there was a Chancellor
set over the scholars by the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose
diocese Oxford lay. Very soon the Chancellor was
elected by the University ; and the Masters in congre-
gation could legislate, and sometimes did, although
questions were often effectually decided by a popular
vote among the students, — who also themselves chose
by vote the heads of their hostels or halls. For there
32
The Stones of Oxford
were, at an early date, houses already associated with
learning, and governed either by a common landlord or
by a scholar of some standing and age. There a man
might read, and comfort himself according to his means,
and finally at night stamp up and down a passage, to
warm his feet, before going to sleep in a crowded bed-
chamber. On any day there was a chance that some
splendid man, coming a little in the rear of his fame,
would arrive in Oxford, and lecture or read a book.
Should kings, or priests, or rude citizens interfere, the
scholar could rusticate voluntarily — as he sometimes did
— at Stamford, or Reading, or Maidstone, or Cambridge,
and there, as best he might, by study and self-denial,
as by a sacrament, recreate the University. The City,
and until our own time the Crown, had to pay in round
sums for such an insult as the hanging of several
scholars ; the money lined the bottom of St. Frideswide's
chest. A man with no possessions but the leaf of a
manuscript, or a dagger, or a cloak, left it with the keepers
of the chest as security for a loan, whether he were
Welsh, or Hungarian, or Italian, or French.
An Englishman, William of Durham, who had enjoyed
the University hospitality at Paris, first kindled the flame
which was to be kept burning by so many afterwards,
^s 2i focus perennis ioT the homeless student. He left
Paris after a town-and-gown quarrel, along with many
French students, whom Henry III. welcomed to Oxford
in 1229. William went to Rome, before returning to
England, and remembered Oxford when he lay dying
at Rouen — perchance reminded there of the city
Z?> 3
Oxford
which until fifty years ago was equal with it in ancient
beauty, and has been clouded in the same way. He
left in his will a sum of money to the University. It
was employed in making more steadfast abodes for
Oxford students ; at a house, for example, that stood
on the site of the bookseller's shop opposite University
College lodge. This act is counted the foundation of
University College, with its original four masters, who
shall be thought " most fit to advance or profit in the
Holy Church and who have not to live handsomely
without it in the state of Masters of Arts."
There had previously been similar Halls, and many
were afterwards founded, — Hawk Hall, Perilous Hall,
Elm Hall, Winton Hall, Beef Hall, Greek Hall, Segrim
Hall ; in fact so large a number that half the Oxford
inns are or were perversions of the old Halls ; and even
tradesmen who are not innkeepers now make their rich
accounts among the ghosts of forgotten principals.
These had not in them the necessary statutes and " great
bases for eternity " which a college deserves. But
henceforward there were some fortunate students who
might indeed have to sing or make Latin verses in order
to earn a bed, or a crust and a pot of ale, while making
their way to or from Oxford ; but, once there, they
were sure of such a home as no other place, unless,
perhaps, the place of their nativity, could give.
" It is all," says Newman, speaking of a college, " and
does all that is implied in the name of home. Youths,
who have left the maternal roof, and travelled some
hundred miles for the acquisition of knowledge, find an
34
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE— PRIVATE
GARDEN OF THE MASTER
The building to the left is the east end of the College
Chapel, the entrance tower being seen over the
divitling wall almost in the centre of the picture.
A bay window to the extreme right of the picture,
looking over the garden, is part of the Master's
Lodging.
The Stones of Oxford
altera Troja and simulata Pergama at the end of their
journey and their place of temporary sojourn. Home
is for the youth, who knows nothing of the world, and
who would be forlorn and sad, if thrown upon it. It is
the refuge of helpless boyhood, which would be famished
and pine away if it were not maintained by others. It
is the providential shelter of the weak and inexperienced
who have still to learn how to cope with the temptations
which lie outside of it. It is the place of training for
those who are not only ignorant, but have not yet
learned how to learn, and who have to be taught, by
careful individual trial, how to set about profiting by
the lessons of a teacher. And it is the school of elemen-
tary studies, not of advanced ; for such studies alone can
boys at best apprehend and master. Moreover, it is the
shrine of our best affections, the bosom of our fondest
recollections, a spell upon our after life, a stay for
world-weary mind and soul, wherever we are cast, till the
end comes. Such are the attributes or offices of home,
and like to these in one or other sense and measure, are
the attributes and offices of a College in a University."
In the unconscious preparation for such a place
William of Durham was the first to leave money ; the
founders of Balliol the first to gather a number of
scholars under one roof, with a corporate life, and as we
may assume, a set of customary, unwritten laws ; but
Walter de Merton was the first to endow and provide
with tenements and statutes a college, in all important
respects, like a college of to-day, — a place even at that
time standing in a genial avuncular relationship towards
Oxford
the students, which was rich in influence and the making
of endearing tradition. Perhaps the Merton treasury,
still conspicuous for its steep roof and burliness, was
part of the founder's gift ; and no building could have
been a fitter nest of an idea which was for so long to
make little of time. The Hall retains some features of
the same date. Almost at once the chapel began to rise,
and its light was coloured by the topmost glass just as
it is to-day. In fact, Merton with its older little sister
foundation of St. Alban Hall was, until the annus
mirabilis of Mr. Butterfield, in itself a symbol of the
origin and growth of Oxford as a collegiate university
and as a place of beauty.
The royal Dervorguilla was the godmother of the
kindly college life of to-day. She was the wife of the
founder of Balliol, and was often in Oxford, with her
honoured Franciscan, Richard of Slikeburne, to look
after her sixteen scholars at Old BalHol Hall, in Horse-
monger Street, now Broad Street. Close by, at the
Church of St. Mary Magdalen, she devised an oratory
for the Balliol men. They chose their own Principal,
who presided at disputations and meals. They had
breakfast and supper together, and the more comfortable
of them paid anything in excess of their allowance which
the expenses of the common table might demand. One
poor scholar lived on the crumbs. Thus were men less
often compelled to borrow from the Jews at 60 per cent
on the security of their books.
While Balliol was so progressing, and University
College had its statutes, and Merton already had its Hall,.
36
MERTON COLLEGE AND ST. ALBAN'S
HALL
The entrance Quadrangle of the College is shown in
the picture, to the right of which is the Warden's
residence.
The building farther to the right is the Library, the
steps of which show in the immediate foreground.
St. Alban's Hall, recently attached to Merton
College, appears over the north-east corner of the
Quadrangle.
The Stones of Oxford
the spire of the church of St. Mary the Virgin first rose
against the sky. Then also the ashes of St. Frideswide
were promoted to a new and more precious place of
rest. The sculptor at work upon the shrine had
evidently at his side the leaves of maple and crowfoot
and columbine, ivy and sycamore and oak, hawthorn
and bryony, from the neighbouring woods, where the
saint had lain in hiding or ministered to the calamities
of the poor ; and perhaps the season was late autumn,
for among the oak leaves are acorns, and some of the
cups are empty. All these things he carved on the base
of the shrine.
It was of this period that the story was told that
two barefooted, hungry travellers from the west were
approaching Oxford, and had come in sight of it near
Cumnor, when they found a beautiful woman seated by
the wavside. So beautiful was she that they knelt at
her feet, " being simple men." Sahe Regina I they
cried. Then, she bending forward and speaking, they
were first surprised that she should speak to them ; and
next ventured to speak to her, and ask her name.
Whereat she " raised her small golden head so that in
the sun her hair seemed to flow and flow continually
down," and looked towards Oxford. There two spires
and two towers could just be seen betwixt the oak trees.
" My name," she said, " is known to all men save you.
It is Pulchritudo. And that," as she pointed to the
shining stones of the city, " is my home." Those two
were silent, between amazement and joy, until one said
" It is our Lady ! " and the other " Lo ! it is Venus, and
37
Oxford
she sits upon many waters yonder." Hardly had they
resumed their ordinary pace when they found an old
man, seated by the wayside, very white and yet " very
pleasant and alluring to behold." So to him also the
simple wayfarers knelt down. Then that old man bent
forward and spoke to them with golden words, and only
the one who had called the beautiful woman "Venus"
dared to speak. He it was that questioned the old man
about the woman and about himself. " My name is
Sapientia," he said, and " that is my home," he con-
tinued, and looked towards Oxford, where two spires
and two towers could just be seen betwixt the oak trees.
" And," he concluded solemnly, " that woman is my
mother and she grows not old." The men went their
way, one saying, " It is a place of lies " ; the other saying,
" It is wonderful " ; and when they looked back the
old man and the beautiful woman had vanished. In the
city they were often seen, but the two strangers could
not speak with them, " for they were greatest in the
city of Oxford. Some said that he was an Austin friar
and she a light woman ; but they are not to be believed."
And when they had dwelt in Oxford a short time and
had seen " what store of pious and learned and
illuminated books were in the Halls, and what costly and
fine things in its churches and Convents," the one said,
" I believe that what Sapientia and Pulchritudo said was
the truth " ; and the other said, " Truly, the city is
worthy of them both " ; wherefore they dwelt there
until their deaths, and found it " the most loving and
lovely city " in Christendom.
38
ORIEL COLLEGE
The Hall and Chapel stretch across the picture, in
the centre of which appears the porch. The three
niches contain figures of the Virgin and Child and
Edward IL and III. under canopies.
The tower of Merton College shows above the roof
of the Chapel. This, with the louvres and ogee
gables, forms a picturesque sky-line.
The Stones of Oxford
Dervorguilla and Walter de Merton had thus made
the University a father and a mother to the scholar.
For a time, indeed, the principals had often to transfer
their penates ; the founder's inheritors lived in scattered
tenements which they changed from necessity or choice,
now and then ; yet they had the imperishable sentiment
of home, and for some years they had little more, except
in a small degree at Merton and Queen's, since the
colleges neither demanded nor provided that the scholars
should study according to rule.
Under Edward II. Exeter College was founded, and
linked from the beginning with the west country, by the
simultaneous co-foundation of a school, and the rule
that all the scholars should thence be drawn. Decent
poverty and love of learning were the other qualifica-
tions of a scholar. Then followed Oriel, with Edward
II. as its founder, the advowson of the Church of St.
Mary the Virgin as part of its support, and its name
derived from the Hall of La Oriole, which it received
early, and soon afterwards occupied. Its library was
the first college library ; but the acquirement was
technically defective, and the Fellows of Oriel could not
resist the students who broke in and carried away the
books. Fellows and admirers repaired the loss.
Philippa, Queen of Edward III., was joined with her
chaplain in the foundation of Queen's College " for the
cultivation of Theology, to the glory of God, the
advance of the Church, and the salvation of souls."
A little subtlety on the part of the founder and senti-
ment on the part of the queens, enabled the college to
39
Oxford
exchange compliments with Anne of Bohemia, Henrietta
Maria, Charlotte and Adelaide. The founder was a
Cumberland man, and his college attracted a neighbour
or a man who spoke with his accent or had the same
traditions to become one of the fellows, equal in number
with Christ and His apostles. Before and after the
beginning of colleges, men from the same district made
a small " new Scotland " or " new France " in Oxford
streets. Thus the scholars of St. George's and Oriel
were for some time largely Welsh ; at Balliol and
University College there were many northerners. At
all times these divisions were emphasised by conflicts
with tongue and arrow and sword. Scholars overlooked
their Aristotle at bloody arguments in Grove Street and
Cornmarket, between North and South, Irish and Welsh
and Scotch, in combinations that varied unaccountably
or according to the politics of the day. You might
know a scholar, as an ancient tinker remarked the other
day, remembering the boxing booths of his youth, by
the way he fought. The election of a chancellor, or a
church wake, and an exchange of lusty oaths between
men of two parties were the occasion. In later years
Realists and Nominalists, — Orthodox and Wycliffites,
— now and then reduced their disagreement to simple
terms. Nor were the citizens with difficulty persuaded
to take or make a side in the disputes, whether they
encountered the scholars at inns, or as they stood on
market-days, — the sellers of hay and faggots and hogs,
stretching in their regular places from the East gate, in
front of St. Mary's and All Saints', to Carfax and the
40
GROVE STREET
This narrow street runs from the High Street opposite
St. Mary's Church alongside St. Mary's Hall and
Oriel College, emerging near to Merton, part of the
tower of which College appears.
It contains some picturesque half-timbered buildings,
some of which are shown in the picture.
The Stones of Oxford
Cross Inn. Once, a northern chaplain, *' with other
malefactors," embattled themselves and sought out the
Welshmen with bent bows, crying to the " Welsh dogs
and their whelps " that an Owen or a Meredydd who
looked out at his door was a dead man. The Welshmen
were driven out of the city with ignominy and blood.
The Northeners robbed and murdered indiscriminately,
and destroyed not only books but harps, until, finding
an ale-house, they were incontinently appeased. On
another occasion some townsmen burst in, on a Sunday,
upon a few scholars, wounding and despoiling them.
The scholars spread their story and collected friends.
The townsmen responded to the sound of horns and
St. Martin's bell. Countrymen from Hinksey and
Headington came to the help of the unlearned. The air
whistled and hummed with the flight of arrows and
stones ; the streets were crimsoned. But the reverend
gentleman who led the learned was untimely shot down,
and his cause evaporated. Some scholars fled to the
country, some to sanctuary, and were comforted by the
excommunication and fining of their opponents. After
a similar fight the University was allowed that exemption
from the city courts which it still enjoys. In fact, the
disturbances earned very cheaply for the University
concessions which put the citizens at a disadvantage,
and emphasised distinctions, so as to cause other
disturbances in turn. Henry V,, himself a Queen's
College man, at last interfered with an order that
scholars would only be treated as such if they were
under the rule of an approved head. It was an
41
Oxford
attempt to banish the wild errant scholars, often Irish-
men, and to make a common type of Chaucer's Clerk
of Oxenford, who had been to Padua and knew Petrarch's
verse. He was one who, even in his devotion to books,
did not forget the souls of his benefactors, for which he
was, in the first instance, endowed to pray —
And he was not right fat, I undertake,
But looked holwe, and therto sobrely ;
Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy ;
For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office ;
For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes clad in black or reed
Of Aristotle and his philosophic,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie ;
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre ;
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente
On bookes and his lernynge he it spent,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of him that yaf hym wherewith to scoleye.
Of studie tooke he moost cure and moost heede,
Noght o word spake he moore than was neede.
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence.
Sounynge in moral vertu was his speche.
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.
But William of Wykeham, before that time, had
given to New College a code of ornate and intricate
rules for morals and manners, which became a legacy to
the University at large ; and in the first place checked
the savage liberties of scholars ; in the second, helped
to make learning more " humane," to make the " Arts "
the " humanities." He built a chapel for the exclusive
use of the scholars of his foundation. That in itself
42
NEW COLLEGE
William of Wykeham (1404) built the noble tower
which stands free to the extreme right of the picture.
A portion of the chapel is seen to the left of the
tower, and forms, with it and the trees, a noble group.
The new retaining walls in the foreground are part
of a recent addition to the College.
The Stones of Oxford
was an inestimable addition to the golden chain by which
Oxford holds the memories of men. To the chapel
they were to go every day, and there to say their Faters
and Aves. Its Latin — the fittest language to be uttered
amidst old architecture — and its coloured windows alone
are not to-day as they were in Wykeham's time. He
built the bell-tower and the cloisters, and so gave to
generations a pleasant vision, and — when dreams are on
the wing — a starting-place or an eyrie for dreams. He
built also a kitchen, a brewery, and a bakehouse. He
stocked both a garden and a library for college use.
Long before the " first tutor of the first college of the
first University of the world " entered Oxford with post
horses to assert his position, the Warden of New
College had the use of six horses. He wore an ermine
amice in chapel. He had his own palace apart. But
the humblest member of the foundation had been as
minutely provided for by Wykeham's code. Above
all, the scholar was not to be left to himself in his studies,
but to the care of an appointed tutor. And in 1387
the new college proceeded to William of Wykeham's
quadrangle, with singing and pomp. It was the first
home of scholars in Oxford, which was completely and
specially fashioned for their use alone, to be
A place of friends ! a place of books !
A place of good things olden !
In the next century the ideas of Walter de Merton
and Dervorguilla and William of Wykeham were
borrowed and developed by loving founders, architects,
43
Oxford
and benefactors. The building of Lincoln College,
next founded, was begun as soon as its charter was
received ; a chapel and a library, a hall and a kitchen,
and chambers on three storys, finely and nobly built,
were a matter of course. In the same way. All Souls'
front quadrangle, practically as we see it to-day, was
built at once by Archbishop Chichele, the founder ; and
at Magdalen, which was next founded, the tower began
to rise on the extreme east of the city, to salute the
rising sun with its pinnacles, and on May morning,
with a song of choristers.
For Oxford, the fifteenth century was an age of
libraries and books. Looking back upon it, Duke
Humphrey of Gloucester seems its patron saint, —
donor of books to the Benedictines who lived on the
site of Worcester College, and to the University, —
harbinger of the Bodleian. We can still catch the
savour of the old libraries at Merton where the light
coloured by painted glass used to inlay the gloom under
the wooden roof, or behind the quiet latticed windows
above the cloisters at Christ Church. "What pleasant-
ness of teaching there is in books, how easy, how
secret," says Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, an
old Oxford man, and the giver of the first library to
Oxford. " They are masters who instruct us without
rod or ferule, without angry words, without clothes or
money. If you come to them, they are not asleep ; if
you ask and inquire of them, they do not withdraw
themselves ; they do not chide if you make mistakes ;
they do not laugh at you if you are ignorant. O
44
INTERIOR OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY
The portion of the Library shown in the picture is a
storey built above the Divinity School bv Humphrey,
Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry IV., and the
spectator is looking east towards the wing added bv
Sir Thomas Bodley at the close of the sixteenth
century.
Books cover every available inch of wall space, but
the trusses of the old timbere<i roof are visible, as are
also the more modern galleries, supported by w-ooden
columns. These are for obtaining access to books placed
high in the Library. The strands of light which bar
the centre aisle are from the south windows of the
building, overlooking the Fellows' Garden of Exeter
College. The windows also serve to light the " studies,' '
the latticed and balustered doors of which may be
seen standing open at intervals (see illustration of one
of these " studies ").
The cases in the immediate foreground are used for
modern books.
The Stones of Oxford
books, who alone are liberal and free, who give to all
who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you
faithfully ! by how many types ye are commended to
learned men in the Scriptures given us by the inspiration
of God ! . . . Ye are the wells of living waters, which
father Abraham first digged, Isaac digged again, and
which the Philistines strive to fill up ! . . ." Bury
was a friend of Petrarch and Bradwardine, a Chancellor
and Treasurer of England, and his love of books
became so famous that he was reported " to burn with
such a desire for books and especially old ones that it
was more easy for any man to gain our favour by
means of books than of money. The aumbries of the
most famous monasteries were thrown open, cases were
unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes that
had slumbered through long ages in their tombs wake
up and are astonished." The great discoverer's
pleasure at the university of Paris corresponds to that
of visitors to Oxford in later years. " There," he says,
" are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of
spicery ; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of
volumes ; there are Academic meads shaken by the
tramp of scholars ; there are lounges of Athens ; walks
of the Peripatetics ; peaks of Parnassus ; and porches
of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all Arts
and Sciences, Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is
most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this
passing sublunary world ; there Ptolemy measures
epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the
planets by figures and numbers ; there Paul reveals the
45
Oxford
mysteries." And to complete the resemblance of
Oxford to such a place, he gave all his books to " our
hall at Oxford," where the masters and scholars were to
pray for his soul. The fate of his collection may have
been worthy, but is mysterious. It is said to have been
divided, and part of it perhaps went to Balliol. It
could have found no more honourable abode than the
Balliol library. From the beginning gifts of books had
come in, but chiefly what was even then old-fashioned,
until the middle of the fifteenth century. It was the
period when Guarino at Ferrara was an inspiration to
Europe. Robert Fleming was one of his pupils, and
sent beautiful manuscripts to Lincoln College library ;
and at Lincoln books flowed in before cash. Three
others of Guarino's pupils were Balliol men : Gray,
Bishop of Ely and Chancellor of the University, whose
books were collected with Guarino's help, and passed,
the finest] of their day, to Balliol at his death ; Free,
public reader of physic at Ferrara, a great benefactor of
libraries, and a historian of trees and plants ; and
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, splendid, eloquent, cruel ;
who had made golden speeches to the Pope, the
Cardinals, the men of Padua ; had translated Cicero ;
and on his return, adorned England with his learning
and patronage, and shocked it with the refined cruelties
of Italy. His collection of manuscripts went with
Duke Humphrey's to the University library, where a
room was made for them, over the quiet Divinity
School then being built between St. Mary's and
Durham Hall. Tiptoft was the most striking type of
46
INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY, ALL SOULS
COLLEGE
At the extreme east entl of the Library is a seated
marble figure of Sir William Blackstone, by Bacon,
the standing figure on the north side in the recess
being that of Sir Christopher Codrington, the Founder
of the Library, by Sir Henry Cheere.
Behind the statue is placed a case containing ancient
articles discovered in excavations on the site of the
College.
Book -rests and chairs for students are placed at
intervals in the Library, which is nearly 200 feet long
by over 30 feet wide.
Bronze busts of Fellows alternate with vases on the
cornice of the upper bookcases.
The colour of this Library is especially suited to
its purpose, being quiet and restful to the eye ; the
proportions are excellent, and help the dignity of the
room.
The Stones of Oxford
the Renaissance, of English blood. But it was the
Italian Renaissance ; and after his death the direct
influence of Italy was small in Oxford.
It was, however, an Italian, Vitelli, who uttered the
first words of Greek in Oxford. Plato was soon to
enjoy a new life there, and to be woven into the past of
Oxford, as if he had really been of its children. //
comes et paribus curis vestigia figit. It was an age of
great, unpopular men who came and went suddenly and
obscurely in Oxford, like the first lecturers of the twelfth
century. They were divinely inflated with the beauty
of Greek — a language always more strange and exotic
and fascinating to Englishmen than Latin — and with
admiration of the restorers of that beauty, Chrysoloras,
Chalcondila, Politian. Grocyn, a Magdalen man, fresh
from Italy, taught Greek in the hall of Exeter. Linacre,
a great physician and Grecian, was Fellow of All Souls'.
The refined, persuasive Colet, whose " sacred fury " in
argument Erasmus praised, was also a Magdalen man,
and founder of St. Paul's school. Sir Thomas More,
the most perfect, but unhappily not the most influential
type of the English Renaissance, was at St. Mary Hall.
Erasmus met them all in Oxford, within that old gate-
way of St. Mary's College in New Inn Hall Street. As
they stepped out after the symposium, one pointed to a
planet in the sky :
" See how Jupiter shines ; it is an omen," said he.
" Yes," said another, " and we have been listening to
Apollo."
For a time the Grecians were ridiculed and attacked
47
Oxford
in the streets by men who called themselves Priam,
Hector, and Paris, and behaved — like Trojans. In that
first enthusiasm men seemed very near to the inac-
cessible gods. Perhaps some were disposed to follow
Pico della Mirandola in pursuit of them. There was
therefore a party which opposed the study of Greek as
heretical ; and More was withdrawn from Oxford to
avoid the danger.
From the beautiful Magdalen cloisters came the men
who launched Corpus Christi College, just after Erasmus
had published the New Testament in Greek and the
ancient Brasenose Hall had at last grown into a college.
The founder gave copies of Homer, Herodotus, Plato,
and Horace, which still survive. There was a public
lecturer in Greek on the foundation. Erasmus himself
applauded and prophesied liberally of its future. It was
the " new college " of the Renaissance, as Wykeham's
had been of the Middle Ages. The readers were to be
chosen from England or Greece or Italy. And among
the first members of the college was the mystical
Bavarian dialler, Nicholas Kratzer, who made a dial in
Corpus garden, and that exquisite one for Wolsey,
which is to be seen, in drawing, in the library. Wolsey's
own college was built over against St. Frideswide's, part
of which, together with one side of its cloisters, was
destroyed to give it place. It contained the largest
quadrangle and the most princely kitchen in Oxford.
When Henry the Eighth spoiled the monasteries, the
bells of Osney were carried to Christ Church ; and one
of them, over Wolsey's gateway, does what it can to
48
THE CLOISTERS, MAGDALEN COLLEGE
The Hall and Chapel of the College stretch nearly
across the picture immediately in front of the spectator,
the oriel window which lights the dais of the Hall
marking the division between the west end of the
Hall and the east end of the Chapel.
Farther west, and closely adjoining the Chapel, at
the south-west angle of the Cloisters, rises the
Founder's Tower. A gateway under the Tower leads
to the (Quadrangle of St. John the Baptist and the
entrance to the College.
The figures above the buttresses of the Cloisters
were probably not designed for their present position,
but add to the picturesqueness of the Cloisters, which,
it will be observed, project from the main body of the
buildings.
Above the gleaming roof of the Chapel appears the
beautiful bell tower of the College, detached, and
built at a different angle to the Hall and Chapel, which
are continued in the same line. The tower is 145
feet high, and was completed about 1505.
Men in Masters' gowns walk and converse on the
grass.
The time is late afternoon.
The Stones of Oxford
call the undergraduates home at nine, with a deep voice,
as if it spoke through its beard, which pretends to be B
flat — " Bim-bom," as the old leonine hexameter says.
Hark ! the bonny Christ Church bells — I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 —
They sound so wondrous great, so wondrous sweet,
As they trowl so merrily, merrily.
Oh ! the first and second bell.
That every day, at four and ten, cry,
" Come, come, come to prayers ! "
And the verger troops before the Dean.
Tinkle, tinkle, ting, goes the small bell at nine.
To call the bearers home :
But the devil a man
Will leave his can
Till he hears the mighty Tom.
So runs the catch of a later Dean. At Christ Church
also there was a lecturer in Greek. The dialler,
Kratzer, was made mathematical professor. Wolsey's
chapel never rose above a few feet in height, and the
uncompleted walls remained for a century ; St. Frides-
wide's became, almost at the same time, the cathedral of
the newly-created see of Oxford, and the chapel of the
college.
The grandiose Christ Church kitchen, which caused
so much laughter because it was the Cardinal's first
contribution to his college, was in fact rather character-
istic of the age that followed. It was built with the
revenues of suppressed monasteries. It was almost
contemporaneous with the destruction of many priceless
books by reformers who were as ignorant of what is
dangerous in books as a Russian censor. The shelves
of Duke Humphrey's library were denuded and sold.
49 4
Oxford
The shrine of St. Frideswide's, where the University
had long offered reverence twice a year, was shattered ;
the fragments were used here and there in the buildings
of the time. The relics of the saint were husbanded by
a pious few in hope of a restoration ; but they were
finally interred with those of Peter Martyr's wife — a
significant mixture. It was the age when the University
became the playground of the richer classes, and the
nobleman's son took the place of the poor scholar in a
fellowship. Now men found time to dispute with
Cambridge as to which university was of the greatest
antiquity. The arguments put forward in Oxford were
seldom more convincing than this : that Oxford was
named from a ford, Cambridge from a bridge ; and
since the ford must have been older than the bridge,
Oxford was therefore founded first. Greek for the
time decayed, and the founder of Trinity College feared
that its restoration was impossible in that age. As to
Latin, Sir Philip Sidney, who was at Christ Church, told
his brother that Ciceronianism was become an abuse
among the Oxonians, " who neglected things for words."
Oxford was dignified mainly by the architecture of
Christ Church ; by the foundation of Trinity, St. John's,
and Jesus College, all on learned and holy ground ; by
the martyrdom of Latimer and Ridley, opposite Balliol ;
and by great names, like those of Burton and Marston
at Brasenose, Peele at Broadgates Hall (Pembroke),
Raleigh at Oriel, Hooker at Corpus Christi. Religion
was still in the pot, and men could not confidently
tell what it would turn out to be. On the one hand,
50
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
It is the east front of the College we see in the
picture, the library occupying the south end to the
left. The garden upon which it looks is one of the
most beautiful and extensive in Oxford.
Some buildings of Balliol College show to the left.
The time is late afternoon in summer.
The Stones of Oxford
the Earl of Leicester, as Chancellor of the University,
mended and confirmed its organisation ; on the other
hand, John Lyly was " the fiddlestick of Oxford," and
other Magdalen men, lovers of open air, and especially
in the windy forest of Shotover, slew the King's deer.
At the new college of St. John's, fellows and presidents
suffered for the old religion, and Edwin Campion was
hanged ; they preserved, and still preserve, the statue
of St. Bernard from the old foundation to which their
college succeeded. At the end of the century, the most
effective Oxford man of his time, William Laud, became
Fellow of St. John's. He built a new quadrangle, and
as Chancellor made of the statutes that long and many-
tailed whip which every one knows. He created modern
Broad Street by deleting the cottages which stood near
and opposite to Trinity. The impressive, uncomfortable
Convocation House was his work. Within sight of
it was the library which Sir Thomas Bodley earlier in
the century had built and stored. It became the calmest,
most inviolate, and most learned place in Europe.
At Christ Church, Dean Duppa, the first of the im-
provers of Oxford, was beginning the work of destruc-
tion which the Puritans continued so well. But it was
then the good fortune of several colleges to receive
large additions of a simple and homely character, which
did more than any others to make Oxford what it is. It
was the age of the retired Lincoln College chapel, with
its carved panels of perfumed cedar and rich, quaint
glass ; the placid garden front of Wadham, as seen
through the cedar tree to-day ; the front and colonnades
51
Oxford
of St. John's which look on the garden ; the south end
of the Exeter garden front that sees so much ; the front
quadrangle of University College ; the hall and chapel
of St. Mary's Hall ; the east end of Jesus College
chapel, which was just finished when Henry Vaughan
arrived ; and the front quadrangle of Pembroke College,
converted from Broadgates Hall by a clothier, the Earl
of Pembroke, and James I., and opened with ceremonies
which included a fantastic Latin oration by Sir Thomas
Browne, as senior undergraduate. The architecture of
Wadham is a remarkable proof of the influence of
antiquity upon men and things in Oxford. The
founders, in 1609, were Nicholas Wadham and Dorothy,
his wife, of Merifield in Somerset. The builders were
mainly west country men, and worked in that lingering
Gothic style which was still vital in Oxford, and seems
to have guided the hand of Wren (if it was Wren)
when he planned the fan tracery of Brasenose library.
But in the building of Wadham chapel, one John Spicer
and his men seem to have been haunted by the beauty
of the Perpendicular churches of their native Somerset.
The windows are so clear a reconstruction of this dream
that an experienced judge reftised to believe that they
were of later date than Christ Church. Thither came a
son of Sir Walter Raleigh and Robert Blake, who took
opposite sides when the Civil War broke out.
There was a prelusive struggle between town and
gown in the year before the war. The chancellorship
of Laud had roused opposition ; but the University
was almost unanimous for Charles, and easily chose
52
MAGDALEN TOWER AND BOTANIC
GARDEN
The tower of Magdalen College is seen rising over
the trees of the Botanic Garden, illumined by the last
rays of the setting sun.
Beneath the poplar is one of the gate piers, and
through an opening in the clipped hedge shows the
basin of a fountain.
Two girls walk in the meadows.
The Stones of Oxford
its side, when he demanded a loan on the eve of the
war.
Van Ling had just painted the windows of University
College chapel. The Dean of Christ Church, or rather
" Smith of London," had just finished the airy over-
traceried approach to Christ Church hall, upon which
every one looks back as he steps down to the cloisters.
Other work was in preparation at Christ Church. But
all building suddenly ceased.
A brief visit of Parliament troops to the yet un-
fortified city was recorded by the shattering of the
Virgin and her Child over St. Mary's porch. After
Edgehill, the King came to Oxford, and the effect was
worse than the mutilation of a Virgin of stone. The
University Volunteers, some armed with bows, were
drilled in the quadrangle of New College and Christ
Church, and skirmished in the Parks. The royal
artillery lay in Magdalen Grove. New College tower
and cloisters became the arsenal : New Inn Hall the
mint. Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria were
lodged at Merton. The Court was held at Christ
Church, A Fellow of Magdalen and a Fellow of All
Souls' edited the royalist gazette, Mercurius Aulicus,
" the latter pleasing more with his buffoneries." The
besieging Parliamentarians were spread about the high
ground of Headington, and the low fields on the north
of the city.
The greater number of scholars left Oxford, and
their rooms were occupied by ladies and cavaliers.
College trees were cut down for use in the defences.
Oxford
A little war, much gallantry and coarseness, drove
away learning and tranquillity, unwilling to linger
for^ the sound of Sir John Denham's smooth and
insipid Muse, which produced Coopers Hill in 1642.
The Muses were probably in hiding abroad with
Lovelace and Marvell ; for Milton was writing only
prose, and George Wither, a Magdalen man, was a
captain of Parliamentary horse at Maidstone. Yet a
contemporary pamphlet says that " Robin Goodfellow "
found the Muses near Eynsham. " He had not gone
as far as Ensham, but he espied the nine Muses in a
vintner's porch crouching close together, and defending
themselves as well as they could from the cold visitation
of the winter's night. They were extream poore, and
(which is most strange) in so short an absence and
distance from Oxford they were grown extreamly
ignorant, for they took him for their Apollo, and
craved his power and protection to support them."
One room at Trinity College was pleasant still ;
for the glass of the window was richly painted with a
St. Gregory. And there Aubrey received the newly-
published Religio Medici^ " which first opened my
understanding," He carried it to Eston with Sir
Kenelm Digby. Coming back to Oxford, he bade a
servant to draw the ruins of Osney " two or three
ways before 'twas pulled down."
Plague came in 1643, ^^^ i^ the following year.
The Cavaliers were reputed to have embezzled books
from the Bodleian, which had formerly resisted, and
won the respect of, Charles himself. The colleges
54
MAGDALEN TOWER AND BRIDGE
The Bridge runs westward across the picture, some
buildings of the Botanic Garden appearing on the
extreme left.
Over the centre of the Bridge rises the fine tower
of the College, while to the right above the north
balustrade of the Bridge shows the roof of the Hall
and Chapel.
On the ground floor of the gabled buildings are the
kitchens, the upper storey being used as sets of rooms
for students.
We see part of the river Cherwell.
The Stones of Oxford
made what some call a " friendly loan " of all their
plate : it was never returned or replaced by the King.
Week by week, they furnished him with labour and
cash. And when the Parliamentarians entered at last,
there were at Merton, for example, " no Bachelors,
hardly any Scholars, and few Masters," and the hall
was untenantable. The triumph of Parliament brought
with it an inquisition in Oxford, which resulted in the
exile, not without force, of the greater number of heads
of houses and fellows for refusal to submit. The
soldiers broke the Magdalen chapel window -glass ;
Cromwell himself took away the college organ to
Hampton Court. But " the first thing General Fairfax
did, was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve the
Bodleian Library. He was a lover of learning, and had
he not taken this special care, that noble library had
been utterly destroyed." The chief objection to the
intruded fellows and heads of houses seems to have
been that they were intruded and were likely to stay.
As for their accomplishments, though some lacked
humour, they seem to have been respectable. The
undergraduates and bachelors were in the main loyal to
Cromwell ; and when Prince Charles was rumoured to
be approaching Oxford, New College tower became a
Parliament citadel, and a troop of horse was enlisted
from the colleges. The old glory of religion faded ;
the sound of distant Latin chanted was no longer heard
in Christ Church and New College. But in one house,
three devoted men preserved the old religion right
through the Commonwealth, constantly and without
SS
Oxford
molestation. Other changes made men more content.
Three coffee-houses were opened in Oxford and
patronised by royalists and " others who esteemed
themselves virtuosi and wits." Men who would have
adorned any age came up. Christopher Wren came to
Wadham, and thence to All Souls'. Evelyn revisited
Oxford and found no just ground to regret the former
times, ..." creation of Doctors, by the cap, ring,
kiss, etc., those ancient ceremonies and institutions, as
yet not wholly abolished." At All Souls' he heard
"music, voices, and theorbos, performed by some
ingenious scholars." At New College " the chapel was
in its ancient garb, notwithstanding the scrupulosity of
the times," and the chapel at Magdalen was " in
pontificial order, the altar only I think turned table-
wise." Then he dined at Wadham, and wrote down
an account of what he saw at the Warden's, " that
most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins."
The transparent apiaries, hollow speaking statues, dials,
waywisers, and other " artificial mathematical and
magical curiosities," which he saw, well illustrate the
activities of the time in the cradle of the Royal Society.
A little after Wren came Thomas Traherne, the
poet, to Brasenose, still enjoying that childhood which
he praised so adeptly. We may think of him in the
peaceful embowered city as having that characteristic
ecstasy at the sight of common things which his
lyrical prose describes. " The corn was orient and
immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was
ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to
56
ALL SOULS' COLLEGE AND THE HIGH
STREET
On the right of the picture are the entrance gate and
part of the south front of All Souls' College. West
of the College, and facing the narrow street leading
into Radcliffe Square, shows the east end of the south
aisle of St. Mary's Church, and the white pinnacles of
the Nave.
Past the porch and the new extension of Brasenose
to the High Street rises the tower and spire of All
Saints', the distance being closed by the tower of
St. Martin at Carfax.
The Stones of Oxford
everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as
precious as gold : the gates were at first the end of the
world. The green trees, when I saw them first through
one of the gates, transported and ravished me ; their
sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap,
and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange
and wonderful things. The men ! O what venerable
and reverend creatures did the aged men seem !
Immortal cherubim ! And young men glittering and
sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of
life and beauty ! "
Again, books began to flow in their natural courses
to the libraries. Selden's eight thousand came to the
Bodleian. Building was resumed ; for Brasenose
chapel was half built by the time of the Restoration.
The Restoration restored to Oxford the Church, a
few excellent old men, and the morals of the siege.
The august Clarendon was indeed Chancellor ; but the
city became a fashionable resort. Charles II., with his
Queen and Castlemaine, were there in 1663, and again
with the Parliament in the year of the plague. " High-
thundering Jove," runs a contemporary ballad, supposed
to be spoken by London to Oxford : —
High-thundering Jove cannot withstand thy charms,
That Britain's mighty monarch in thy arms
Canst hold so fast, and quite to overcome
The greatest potentate in Christendom.
The aim of scholars, said Anthony a Wood, " is not
to live as students ought to do, viz., temperate,
abstemious, and plain and grave in their apparel ; but
57
Oxford
to live like gentry, to keep dogs and horses, to turn
their studies into places to keep bottles, to swagger in
gay apparell and long periwigs ! " There was too much
punning, thought Eachard. In his inquiry into the
causes of the contempt of the clergy, he is not kind to
the University of the day, and asks, " Whether or not
Punning, Quibbling, and that which they call Joquing,
and such delicacies of wit, highly admired in some
academic exercises, might not be very conveniently
omitted ? " The first Common Room was established
at Merton soon after the Restoration. But in that age
even Common Rooms seem to have been but privileged
and secluded inns, and quite without the severely
genial amphictyonic character of to-day. When Pepys
visited Oxford he naturally found it " a very sweet
place" ; spent 2s. 6d. on a barber in its honour ; los.
" to him that showed us All Souls' College and Chichley's
picture " ; 2s. for seeing the Brasenose butteries and
the gigantic hand of the " Child of Hale " ; and having
seen the Physic Garden, the hospital, and Friar Bacon's
study, concluded : " Oxford mighty fine place, well
seated, and cheap entertainment." But the cheap
entertainment is now among the lost causes. A little
while afterwards, Evelyn attended the opening of
the Sheldonian Theatre, built by Wren. He com-
plained of the " tedious, abusive, sarcastical rhapsody "
which was permitted on that occasion to the Terr<£
Filius^ a kind of Billingsgate Aristophanes, who half-
ofScially represented the undergraduate aversion
to sweetness and light. The university printing-
58
INTERIOR OF THE SHELDONIAN
THEATRE
The proceedings of Commemoration take place here,
at which time the area — entered by the door to the
left — is crowded by visitors.
One of the two figures is gazing at the pulpit from
which the prize poems and essays of successful
candidates are recited.
The axe and fasces projecting from the pulpit denote
the justice of the awards.
The upper gallery is supported by wooden columns
standing upon a podium partially surrounding the area
and the building altogether is one of Sir Christopher
Wren's best works.
The Stones of Oxford
office lay under the theatre, and, says a ballad of the
time —
What structure else but prides it to reveal
Treasures ? which bashful this would fain conceal ; . . .
Spain, Gascoin, Florence, Smyrna, and the Rhine
May taste their language there, tho' not the wine.
The Jew, Mede, Edomite, Arabian, Crete,
In those deep vaults their wandring ideoms meet,
And to compute, are in amazement hurld,
How long since Oxford has been all the world.
At Magdalen, men were planting the elms of the
grove and laying out the walks round the meadow.
Bishop Fell was completing the west front of Christ
Church, which the Civil War had interrupted, and
planting those elms in the Broad Walk that look on
the Cathedral and Corpus and Merton, and, farther
off, Magdalen tower. In 1680 Wren's tower over
Wolsey's gateway at Christ Church was finished. One
of the Osney bells was recast to hang therein.
The resistance of James II. fell in this coarse,
frivolous, self-satisfied age. He was welcomed to
Oxford by music and ceremony. The conduit " ran
claret for the vulgar." But when he adventured to
force his nominee into the presidentship of Magdalen,
he * could not even procure a blacksmith to burst a
resisting door. Again, the University stood to arms to
oppose Monmouth's rebellion, and clothed its members
in scarlet coats, with scarves, and white-plumed hats ;
but had to be contented with the bonfires in celebration
of the victory at Sedgemoor, and a full-dress parade.
Not long afterwards many yards of orange ribbon made
59
Oxford
the High Street gaudy with a pretence at honouring
William III. But the colleges were vigorously
Jacobite, and proved it by drinking the healths of the
Stuarts as long as they could. Merton, Exeter, All
Souls', and Wadham were the exceptions. One example
of the lighter occupations of the period is to be found
in a story of somewhat earlier date, told of Dr.
Bathurst, Vice -Chancellor and President of Trinity.
" A striking instance of zeal for his college, in the
dotage of old age, is yet remembered. Balliol College
had suffered so much in the outrages of the grand
rebellion, that it remained almost in a state of desola-
tion for some years after the Restoration, a circumstance
not to be suspected from its flourishing condition ever
since. Dr. Bathurst was perhaps secretly pleased to see
a neighbouring and once rival society reduced to this
condition, while his flourished beyond all others.
Accordingly, one afternoon, he was found in his
garden, which then ran almost continuous to the east
side of Balliol College, throwing stones at the windows
with much satisfaction, as if happy to contribute his
share in completing the appearance of its ruin." I seem
to find an echo of the sentiment of very different men,
with a love of the old time amidst the politics and wine
of the day, in Aubrey's ejaculation : he wished that
monasteries had not entirely been suppressed ; for if
but a few had been left, " what a pleasure 'twould have
been to have travelled from monastery to monastery ! "
Nevertheless, the Oxford output [of bishops was not
decreased, and the number of quiet scholars — men like
60
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
In the centre of the quadrangle rises a cylindrical dial,
surmounted by a " pelican in her piety," the badge of
the Founder of the College. Behind, to the right, is
the great entrance gateway and tower.
The College cat gives scale.
The Stones of Oxford
Hody of Wadham — was larger than one might conclude
from the pages of honest Thomas Hearne, of St.
Edmund Hall.
It was upon an old monastic foundation — once
Gloucester College, then Gloucester Hall — that the
one new eighteenth - century college was established.
Gloucester Hall had numbered among its inhabitants
several famous, rather odd men, like Tom Coryat and
Thomas Allen, but had fallen away after the Restoration.
It was, in short, almost a possession of nettles. The
buildings were only kept on the edge of desolation by
the Principal and two or three families in residence.
The seventeenth century had made one fantastic attempt
to retrieve the Hall. A colony of twenty students
from the four Patriarchates of the Eastern Church was
to be regularly established there. But the dreamy plan
was soon parched and destroyed in the odour of scandal.
After much trifling procrastination, the Greeks were
succeeded by Worcester College, and a lucky poverty
left the worn old buildings for a little longer untroubled,
A library, a hall, and a chapel were prepared for the
new society. Wide spaces of land on every side of it
were retained or acquired, which afterwards gave the
college a fat rent and its incomparable bosky and
watered garden.
While Worcester was being founded in the conven-
tional way, Oxford was developed by such buildings as
the cloister at Corpus, the Pembroke chapel, the hall at
All Souls', the front quadrangle at Queen's, and the
little Lincoln " Grove " cottages. Then also the
6i
Oxford
Trinity College lime trees were planted. In most of
the work of that time Dean Aldrich of Christ Church
had a hand or a word. This clever and genial tutor
was one of the best men of his day, and quite typical of
the early eighteenth century. He seems to have been
one to whom action came more naturally than dreams,
if he dreamed at all ; and he could easily express the
many sides of his personality in a lasting way. A happy
and golden mediocrity 1 He encouraged Boyle in
the dazzling indiscretion of The Epistles of Phalaris.
He wrote the enduring Oxford Logic, a smoking catch,
and " Hark ! the bonny Christ Church bells " ; and
perhaps this translation : —
If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink,
Good wine, a friend, or being dry.
Or lest we should be, by and by.
Or any other reason why.
The size of his architectural designs is seen in Peckwater
quadrangle at Christ Church ; their charm, in All Saints',
which the moon loves. Soon after his death in 17 lo,
the stately library at Christ Church and that copious one
at All Souls' were begun.
In the year of the building of Pembroke chapel,
Samuel Johnson entered the college, where they preserve
his deal writing-table and china tea-pot. As Aldrich
represents the early part of the century in Oxford, so
Johnson represents the middle. Men are nowadays
disposed to blame the cheerfulness of an age that pro-
duced a hundred immortals who do not give the true
62
CHRIST CHURCH— PECKWATER
QUADRANGLE
Through the opening between the west end of the
College Library on the right, and some houses inhabited
by Masters of the College on the left, appears the
spire of the LIniversity Church of St. Mary. Part of
the pediment of the buildings on the north side of
Peckwater Quadrangle shows beneath.
The piece of masonry on the extreme right of the
picture is part of the wall of the passage leading to
Tom Quadrangle.
Two undergraduates converse to the left.
The Stones of Oxford
ring. The college historians often entitle one of their
eighteenth - century chapters the "dark" or "iron"
age ; and indeed, as a " school of universal learning,"
the Oxford of that day might be called in question. It
was more aristocratic and exclusive, perhaps, than it had
ever been, and it failed to justify itself. " What class in
life " — it was a song by a fellow in a play of the period —
What class in life, tho' ne'er so great.
With a good fellowship can compare ?
And in the same play, says one, of Horace, " He was a
jolly utile dulci dog, and I believe formerly might be
fellow at a college." Yet in our backward glances over
Oxford history, how often do we stop when we reach
that age ! whether we are drinking from an old remind-
ing tankard with the date 17 — , or looking at one of
its books, or living in one of the rooms which it wains-
cotted or furnished, heavily but how genially ! " You
are a philosopher. Dr. Johnson," said Edwards, his
college friend. " I have tried too in my time to be a
philosopher ; but I don't know how, cheerfulness
was always breaking in." Cheerfulness broke in pretty
often in Oxford. And that was a time when there
was more love of Oxford than ever before. Even
the wealthy Fellows of All Souls' (" that Eden to the
fruitful mind," as Lady Winchilsea called it at that
time) never bought their college ; and when one of
them was taunted with the quip that Oxford was less
learned than Bath, he was able to reply that it was also
more fashionable. I find, too, in its love of the past, as
63
Oxford
in its love of nature, something heartier, though I dare-
say less mystical, than our own. Johnson's love of
Pembroke is an example. He had lived there as an
undergraduate only fourteen months, and there seems
to have been little that was tangible, to take hold of
him in so short a time. Yet when he came back long
after, and heard old Camden's grace after meat — which
they still use — he was at home. It is true that men
of that age could as little appreciate its blank verse as
we can compose it, but there were many who could then
appreciate what we can now only describe. The country
(in summer) — antiquity — good living — were fine things;
but when they wrote, it was theology, or morals, or in-
accurate philology. There was a man, long ago with God,
who after much waiting obtained a fine coveted room at
New College : instead of writing a sonnet forthwith, he
expressed a wish to kick some one downstairs inconti-
nently. On one occasion, it is said, the head of a college,
and a great lover of Oxford, who was jocund and
recumbent after a feast, was with great circumstance
invited by several wags " to accept the crown of this
old and famous kingdom, since King George has
resigned." To which he slowly replied, without
surprise, that '* if we can hold our Court of St. James's
in this Common Room, we shall not demur.". Warton's
Companion to the Guide and Wood's Modius Saliiim are
full of what we should call poor Oxford humour ; but I
think there is sufficient indication of the laughter it
caused, to make us pause in any condemnation of it as
compared with our own "thoughtful mirth," which
64
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA
BODLEIANA, FROM ALL SOULS" COLLEGE
Across the picture runs a cloistered screen separating
the green quadrangle of All Souls' College from
Radcliffe Square. Over an entrance to the College
to the left rises an octangular ogee roof, protecting
some beautiful wrought-iron gntes.
To the right of this is the grand sweeping entablature
of the Camera, bearing its majestic dome and lantern.
This dome may compare with some of the finest in
Europe.
The time is morning.
The Stones of Oxford
inspires mainly a desire to say something more mirthful
and less thoughtful. And for those who care for none
of these things, what sweeter or more dignified picture
of quietness and study is there than at Lincoln in
Wesley's time, or at University under Scott, or Christ
Church under Jackson ? What handsomer than the
Camera which was built in the middle of that century,
or better to live in than Fisher's buildings at Balliol ?
Or what inheritance more agreeable than the old
bowling-greens, so happily celebrated in the Sphasris-
terium ; or than the college gardens, which are nearly
all eighteenth-century gifts ? It has been said that the
only movement in the eighteenth century was a very
slow ascent to the nineteenth. That is not quite so,
as many will agree who look at the re-fronting of
University College chapel and hall, which was done
when the wonderful century was reached at length. In
fact, if we condemn the eighteenth century, we have to
disown a large part of the nineteenth. In Oxford that
is especially so. The destruction of the old chapels at
Balliol and Exeter, and of the Grove at Merton, was
carried out only fifty years ago ; so long have the dark
ages lingered in Oxford. As for the new buildings at
New College, Christ Church, Merton, etc., they have
been so widely condemned that it is to be presumed
there is some merit in them, which an age nearer the
millennium will praise.
But those works are only the less admirable and
more conspicuous emblems of the nineteenth-century
reformation. It had at length become possible again for
65 5
Oxford
a man to keep his terms and take his degree without
continual residence within college walls. The numbers
of the University grew rapidly, and at a time when
more efficient tutors and discipline made Oxford at-
tractive to many who were neither frivolous nor rich.
Oxford became, in fact, a place of education. The
previous century had been conspicuous for great names
and lack of system ; what was achieved was due to
individual endowment and energy ; and the able men
stood somewhat apart from their contemporaries.
Wesley, for example, not only failed to make a strong
party, but even to rouse an opposition of useful size.
The nineteenth century, on the other hand, was a
sociable one in matters of intellect. There were few
lonely names. There were many groups. College after
college — in a few cases before, in nearly all cases after,
the first Commission — became known for their style of
thought more than for their noblemen or wine. The
fault of monkishness was either blotted out or exchanged
for one that is more commonly pardoned to-day, nimium
gaudens popularibus auris. At first, this meant an
emphasis upon the distinction between college and
college. It required more than a walk up Turl Street
to get from Oriel to Balliol. The competition en-
gendered by the new separate honour schools probably
increased this for a time ; and it was reported of one
Head that, when told that Worcester College was
above his own in a class list, he turned to the butler,
and asked where Worcester was. But the east wind of
the Commission changed all that. At the same time
66
ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF HERTFORD
COLLEGE AND THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY
The gateway and wall have disappeared, this view of
the Library being shut out by the new high buildings.
To the left of the picture is a part of the College,
and over the gateway shows a portion of the old
Schools, the majestic dome and lantern of the Rad-
cliffe Library filling the intervening space.
A couple of undergraduates lean against the building
to the left of the picture.
The Stones of Oxford
the friendly and often stimulating intercourse between
senior and junior members of the colleges grew apace,
and was no doubt encouraged by the increasing fashion-
ableness of athletic sports, which gave a " Blue " the
importance of a fellow, and a greater consciousness of
importance.
In its progress towards what is most admired in
modern Oxford, Balliol is the most interesting college.
Nearly all other colleges have indeed acquired a more
or less thorough resemblance to Balliol in its good and
bad points, but no other college has been so long, so
persistently, and so progressively devoted to the same
ideal. Even those who do not wholly like that ideal
cannot fail to admire the consistency and energy of the
men who have achieved it, or could find the like to
any comparable extent in colleges that cherish other
affections.
But nowhere has there been an entire rupture with
the past, or anything new which has not in a sense been
laid reverently upon the foundations of the old. If
one could see Keble College without its buildings,
it might well seem to be not the youngest of the
colleges. So, too, with Hertford College, which is
indeed but the rejuvenation of the old homes of
Hobbes, Selden, and Matthew Hale : it has doffed knee-
breeches and periwig, and even those perhaps unwill-
ingly, since its fellowships are lifelong for the celibate.
And in the architecture of Oxford, some of the most
novel effects of last century were produced by work in
the same spirit of reverence for the past. Here, a
67
Oxford
window received back its casements again ; there, a fine
roof was rescued from its burial under the impertinent
superimpositions of more egotistic innovators. No
other age and city perhaps would have been so curious
and fortunate in restoring the old, as when at Christ
Church the old floral marble base of St. Frideswide's
shrine was restored after three hundred years in the
wilderness. Part was found in the cemetery wall, part
in a well-side, part in a staircase, part in a wall : and
almost the whole now rests in the Cathedral again.
68
INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF
CHRIST CHURCH
At the east end of the choir is seen the wheel-
window with two circular-headed windows underneath,
restored in 187 1.
Above these rises the late groined roof of the Choir,
its richness contrasting well with the Norman arches
below, which spring from corbels attached to the
pillars.
The Cathedral is also the College Chapel.
DONS ANCIENT AND MODERN
CHAPTER III
dons ancient and modern
Modern
The senior members of the University are perhaps as
interesting as they have ever been. The freshman or
other critical stranger to the city finds them less
picturesque, if his ideal be anything like that of the
youthful Ruskin, who looked for presences like the
Erasmus of Holbein or Titian's Magnificoes, and was
disappointed at Christ Church by all save one. For
the President or Master, whose absolutism used to be
the envy of kings, now bears his honours inconspicu-
ously. The fellows of colleges are no longer, indeed, a
distinct and noticeable class, but are, for the most
part, purely and simply scholars, or historians, or
instructors of youth. The conscientious, capable, and
hard-working Don is probably commoner than he has
ever been ; and his success is great. But even he
might echo the cry against a possible tendency towards
mere educational efficiency in fellows, which is expressed
in the exclamation : " Nothing is so much to be feared
71
Oxford
as that we should one day compete with the Board
Schools."
" O goodly usage of those antique times," when it
was a sufficient grace to be a scholar, and it was a kind
of virtue to quote from Horace and never to play upon
words outside Homer. Here and there such a man
survives, always old, married to the place, and yet with
a widowed air, looking as if he had crept out of one of
the reverend pictures in the hall, and still clear-sighted
enough to see the length of Broad Street and regret it,
fumbling with the spectacles which he bought to protect
his eyes in the first year of railway travelling. No one
could draw him quite so happily as the Sub-Rector of
Lincoln College, and in his latest book he gives us a
charming hint, and there, quite appropriately, but too
pathetically, he allows the old scholar to die.
" The Church, indeed," he writes, " was mouldy
enough, and the air within was close and sleep-giving ;
and as the old parson murmured his sermon twice a
Sunday from the high old pulpit, his hearers gradually
dropped into a tranquil doze or a pleasant day-dream —
all except the old Scholar, who sat just below, holding
his hand to his ear, and eagerly looking for one of
those subtle allusions, those reminiscences of old
reading, or even now and then three words of Latin
from Virgil or the Imitatio with which his lifelong
friend would strain a point to please him. They
had been at school together, and at college together,
and now they were spending their last years together,
for the old Scholar had come, none of us knew
72
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, FROM THE
BOTANIC GARDEN
Part of the tower of Magdalen College is seen to
the left of the picture, under which are some of the
glass houses of the Botanic Garden.
Above the pillar surmounted by a vase appears the
roof of the College Hall, and farther to the right sets
of rooms and the kitchens.
Three arches of Magdalen Bridge show to the right.
Dons Ancient and Modern
whence, and settled down in the manor-house by the
churchyard, hard by the Rectory of his old companion.
And so they walked together through the still shady
avenues of life's evening, wishing for no change,
reading much and talking little, lovers of old times
and old books, seeking the truth, not indeed in the
world around them, but in the choice words of the
wise men of old : Pia et humilis inquisitio veritatis per
sanas patrum sententias studens ambulare.
I
Such a one there was, until recently, to be met
walking on a fine day between Magdalen and Oriel ;
or even, in April, as far as the Shotover road in ex-
pectation of hearing the nightingales ; or as far as
Carfax to learn whether the tower was looking any
older. He was exquisitely courteous, without a tinge
of mere courtliness, and could hate and contemn.
Such was his loathing of what was unseemly that he
begged he might be awakened by any one that heard
him snore. If he was a misogynist, it was because he
was shy and ignorant of women. He would gently
insinuate, and as if it were temerity, that even good
women cannot distinguish between fiction and Jane
Austen, and have been known to deposit pins in ash-
trays. He could not express an opinion upon subjects
which he ignored or disliked, and when they were
discussed in the Common Room, he had an irrepressible
sympathy with both sides. Thus he was no politician,
73
Oxford
but was at one with members of Parliament of both
sides, by means of a little genial commonplace. But
on his hobby-horses — sublimis in equis — he had a sweet
eloquence which he " hoped was not persuasive." For
he disliked proselytisers more than proselytes. In later
years, he became too deaf to be quite honest in answer-
ing a stupid or knavish man. He had, too, a little vocal
impediment which he could use rhetorically. Preaching
one day at a country church, he was dwelling at length
upon the good qualities of a prophet.
" That's parson all over," murmured now and then
a grey parishioner, and inquired of whom he spoke.
" Isaiah or Habakkuk," explained his neighbour.
" Then I don't believe," answered the disappointed
man, " there is such a person — unless 'tis another name
for parson."
When an old lady lay a-dying, and was troubled
concerning the destiny of her magpie and tame hare
after her death, the curate amiably suggested that
Providence would take care of them.
" No, no," she interposed, " give them to Mr. ."
He was, despite features which the dull might call
plain, • remarkably, and I had almost said physically,
beautiful, because of the clear shining of his character.
The tender motives that often moulded his lips, the
purity and grace that found expression in his eyes, and
that fluctuation of the lines of the face in thought which
is almost light and shade, wrought an immortal beauty
out of Nature's poor endowment. Nor was that only
when he was in a fit small company. Some men, when
74
Dons Ancient and Modern
not moved by such an influence, lapse into that
sculptured and muddy expression which is the chief
quality of photographs. You may surprise them void
and vi^aste. But if he was ever surprised, it might be
seen that he turned to the intruder fresh from a
spiritual colloquy. His smile, on opening Plutarch,
was as if he blessed and was blessed, and restored the
beholder to the age of the first revival of learning.
Very soft — some said mincing — was his step among
his books, as not knowing what or whom he might
disturb. If you saw him in the Bodleian, he seemed
its familiar spirit, and in some way its outward and
visible expression or heraldic device. Though a wide
and learned reader, he had published nothing that had
anything to do with books. In his youth he had
circulated " An Elegy written within sight of Keble
College," and in later years speculations on the Jurassic
sea and the migration of birds. He often read aloud
to himself, and even to others on being provoked, in
his sounding wainscotted room in sight of All Saints
steeple. Especially he liked to chant Sophocles, and
to the opening of Electra gave a solemn and almost
religious sweetness in the rendering. Then it was that
we knew how he had gained and preserved that notable
grace of pronunciation. He used to say, " It is a fine
day," instead of " Tserfineday." And thus of every
day he made a rosary of gracious thoughts and deeds
among men and Nature and books ; and apparelling a
worldly life with the sanctity of unworldly temperance
and charity, his homeliness became dignified without
75
Oxford
losing its simplicity, and almost ornate with courtesies
that never set a blush in the face of truth.
II
Of the successful man who is a Don by accident I
confess an ignorance that borders on dislike. He is
perhaps a scholar, certainly a courtier. He has the
open secret of perennial youth. It is very likely that
he dabbles in light literature, and may have written a
book of fiction or history with a wide circulation. He
was a gay, discursive parodist in his youth ; chose his
own ties, or thought he did ; worked hard, and con-
cealed the fact from his inferiors. His extreme caution
to-day might appear indiscreet to an impartial judge.
He writes letters to the Times on important matters on
which he seeks information ; or if his old self should be
assertive, he writes over the name of "Justice" or
" One who knows " in a penny paper, and is indignant
towards the friends who fail to recognise his style and
point of view. In this and every possible way he keeps
a firm connection with the great outer world. He
knows the female cousins of all the undergraduates of
his college, and many of them have been mildly in love
with him in a punt. He is often in London, where he
is very academic, and would wish to appear merely well-
informed. When he meets London friends in Oxford,
he is anxious to prove that he at least is not a mere Don ;
yet his friends can only wonder that there is now no
such thing as an Oxford point of view, but only an
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Dons Ancient and Modern
Oxford drawl. His sitting-room is magnificent, and
like style, conceals the man. It is no wonder that a
man with such arm-chairs should be well satisfied. His
books are noble up to the year 1800 — abundant and
select, often old, always fine ; but after the year 1800
a certain timidity of taste may be observed. Of course
his friends' books are there, with the books which you
are expected to know in country houses. For the rest,
he has overcome the difficulty of selection by not
selecting. As the college has good port and is in-
different in its choice of white wine, so he has good
classics and a jumble of later work. He is charitable,
a ready contributor to approved causes. He has
travelled, and is never reduced to silence in company.
He is a good talker, knowing how not to offend. He is
a brilliant host, suave, considerate, — with comprehensive
views, — and ready to make allowances for those who
are not Dons. Perhaps he is in the main a summer
bird. Then he shows that he is a gallant as well as a
scholar and man of the world. He is the figure-head
of his college barge during The Eights, and with an
eye-glass, that is a kind of sixth sense, he surveys
womankind, and sees that it is good.
Ill
There was lately also a more Roman type amongst
us. He had a lusty Terentian wit that was not in the
fashion of these times ; and his proud frankness about
everything but his soul found even less welcome from a
77
Oxford
generation that liked to talk of little else. " A little
hypocrisy " — such was his advice to freshmen, but not
his practice — "a little hypocrisy is useful to a virtuous
man, since it is hard not to appear a hypocrite, especially
when one is not." He was what is called an intemperate
man. For, though a small, fastidious eater and short
sleeper, he was a man of many bottles ; nor had he the
common gift of repenting of the truths which claret
inspired and port enabled him to express. He never
learned to whine over private infelicity — a weighty
shortcoming ; or to moralise on the infelicities of others
— which was almost a virtue. A small Kantian once
asked him how he felt after a bereavement. " It has
never occurred to me," was his reply, " to think how I
felt." An unsuccessful man himself, and burdened by
his more successful and more indolent relatives, his
catchword was, nevertheless, " Success." But he perhaps
hated more than a noisy failure a noisy success. Always
scheming on behalf of others, he laid no plans for him-
self, except by writing his own epitaph, on the day
before his death. He ate, drank, was merry, and did
his duty. He was the life and soul and financial saviour
of his college. At no time was he a profound student ;
he had been elected to a fellowship on account of his
birth ; yet the brilliant scholar and the nice courtier of
the college admitted that he, the chapel, and the cook
were equally indispensable. In fact, he was as near to
the ideal head of a college as it would be wise to have
in an ancient university. He could not lecture, and
was a poor judge of imitation Greek prose. He radiated
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Dons Ancient and Modern
a clean and vigorous worldly influence through both
Common Rooms. He knew every undergraduate who
was within the reach of knowledge. His judgment of
men was as consummate and as untransferable as his
judgment of wine. It was his custom to say that there
had been three philosophers, two ancient, one modern,
in the history of the world — Ecclesiastes, Democritus,
and Sir William Temple of Moor Park. To his pupils
he used to pronounce that, " since you are average men
and will never be able to understand Ecclesiastes or
take the trouble to understand Democritus," they
should follow the Englishman. He then repeated
from memory this passage (with such solemnity that I
believe he felt it to be his own): —
" Some writers, in casting up the goods most desirable
in life, have given them this rank — health, beauty, and
riches. Of the first, I find no dispute ; but to the two
others much may be said ; for beauty is a good that
makes others happy rather than one's self ; and how
riches should claim so high a rank I cannot tell, when
so great, so wise, and so good a part of mankind have,
in all ages, preferred poverty before them — the Thera-
peutae and Ebionites among the Jews, the primitive
monks and modern friars among Christians, so many
dervises among the Mahometans, the Brachmans among
the Indians, and all the ancient philosophers ; who,
whatever else they differed in, agreed in this, of despising
riches, and at best esteeming them an unnecessary trouble
or encumbrance of life : so that whether they are to be
reckoned among goods or evils, is yet left in doubt.
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" When I was young, and in some idle company, it
was proposed that every one should tell what their three
wishes should be, if they were sure to be granted : some
were very pleasant, and some very extravagant ; mine
were health, and peace, and fair weather ; which, though
out of the way among young men, yet perhaps might
pass well enough among old : they are all of a strain ;
for health in the body is like peace in the state, and
serenity in the air ; the sun, in our climate at least, has
something so reviving, that a fair day is a kind
of sensual pleasure, and of all others the most
innocent."
The last words he would often repeat, with this com-
ment : that people to-day were so much busied with
sunsets and landscapes and colours that they had no
such hearty feeling for Nature as the old seventeenth-
century statesman, philosopher, and gardener had.
" Read Cowley and Pope," was his only criticism in
English literature. " Any one can be a Keats, though
few can write as well," he argued, " but it is not so
easy to be like Pope." Meeting Browning one day,
and telling him that he enjoyed some of his poetry, the
poet asked him whether he understood it. " No," said
the Don, " do you ? "
For twenty years, when men spoke of College,
they thought of him. "The University of Oxford,"
said an old pupil who lived to send his son to that
college, "the University of Oxford, at least as a place of
education, consists of old , the river, and the
college pump." That college is now like Roman
80
THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA
BODLEIANA, FROM BRASENOSE
COLLEGE QUADRANGLE
The gateway to the left of the centre of the picture is
the entrance to the College from the Square in which
stands the RadclifFe Library.
The great dome of the Library rises above the
gateway tower, dominating the Square, the College,
and indeed all Oxford.
On the extreme right is the entrance to the Hall.
running east, the direction in which we are looking.
In this Quadrangle formerly stood a metal group of
Samson slaying the lion, which, it is to be regretted,
has been removed. It served to give scale to the
Quadrangle.
Dons Ancient and Modern
literature without Lucretius, or a wine-glass of cold
water.
When I look back and see him, more military than
ecclesiastical (except for a snuffle) in his doctorial
scarlet, I think that it was partly his brow that was his
power. It was a calm, ample, antique brow. In the
ancient world the brow made the man and the god. It
was as divine as asgis or thunder or eagle. It was more
magisterial than the fasces. It commanded the Consulate
and troubled the dominion of Persia and cast down the
power of Hannibal. The brow of Jupiter — of Plato —
of Augustus — was a hill of majesty equal with Olympus.
The history of old sculpture is an Ave ! to the brow.
Now the soul has descended to the eyes. In politics,
war, literature, above all in finance, victory is with the
eyes. The old man had the godlike span of curving
bone ; but his eyes slept. It was his good fortune and
Oxford's honour that he ruled an Oxford college.
IV
Among the younger men is one who spent perhaps
a year in trying to combine high living and high think-
ing ; then made a compromise by dropping the high
thinking ; and at last, perhaps as the result of some
solemn intervention, became ascetic. He is a friend of
authors and potentates. He understands a bishop, and
takes a kindly interest in east-enders, so long as they
are in Oxford. His aspect is grave and calm, since life,
in losing half its vices, has lost all its charm. Like fine
8i 6
Oxford
cutlery, his manners lack nothing but originality ; he
has a good taste in flowers, and can even arrange them.
Nor is the taste in books limited by his connoisseurship
in binding. He is a free and fearless reader, yet careful
in the choice of books to be left on the table. If style
were finish, his writing would be famous ; but his
beautiful style is always subordinated to a really beauti-
ful handwriting. His originally dilettante interest in
palaeography has lured him into some genuine research
among old manuscripts. His lectures are therefore
fresh, thoughtful, and perfect in gesture, delivery, and
composition. I seem to behold Virgil himself at the
end of one of his descants, or Politian at least. If he
had not more love of the applause of his most graceful
pupils than of the learned world, he might be renowned.
But he is content to be three-quarters of a specialist in
history and more than one of the arts, and to be a lode-
star to the ladies of his audience. Perhaps only they
can do him justice.
V
There is (or was) to be found at the top of a mouldy
Oxford staircase the most unpedantic man in the world,
seated underneath and upon and amidst innumerable
books. In the more graceful than sufficient garments
of his leisure, he looked like Homer, with hair still un-
grizzled. He spoke, and back came the Iliad and the
Odyssey on that stormy sound. But he could so well
dissemble this physical magnificence that he passed in
82
BISHOP KINGS HOUSE
The part of the house showint; in this picture faces
to the north ; the east front, at right angles with this,
being in St. Aldate's. The white buildings at the left
are on the east side of St. Aldate's. It was built by
Bishop King, the last Abbot of Osney and the first
Bishop of Oxford. The front was rebuilt in 1628.
Inside, on the first floor, is a coffered ceiling, richly
painted and gilt, probably of the sixteenth century,
and by Italian workmen.
Dons Ancient and Modern
different clothing for an able - bodied seaman and a
member of Parliament.
He loved the forest and cloud and sea as if they had
been brothers. To visit him in his ancient room was
to take a journey to Nature : to walk with him, in all
weathers — to Wood Eaton, Sunningwell, Fyfield, North-
moor — was to go with a talking and genial embodi-
ment of the north-west wind and a dash of orchard
scent.
His room was alive with the spirit of old histories.
Famous men — Pericles or Alexander or John XXII. —
seemed to live once more when they were discoursed of
in that eloquent chamber. It may have been illusion, —
for there was little talk of historical principles, — but
on leaving him, a man felt that he had gone away
" before the mysteries," and that if he could but live in
the rooms of Urbanus, the past would be wonderfully
revealed. Then, a day or two afterwards, he could
remember only Urbanus himself, and, after a brief
indignation at the cheiromancy quite unwittingly
practised, admitted that that was sufficient.
I am not sure whether he professed history or
divinity or Chinese. He wrote, however, an epoch-
making treatise on "The Literature of Aboriginal Races,
with special reference to Sumatra " ; an invaluable
brochure on " The Jewellery of the Visigothic Kings " ;
*' A Complete Exposition of the Ancient Game of
Tabblisk " ; and "A Brief Summary of the Loves of
Diarmad O'Diubhne." His sonnet to M. Mallarme,
though it has been described as trop mallarmise^ is justly
83
Oxford
admired. But he did not write ten volumes of
reminiscences.
I can see him, in a brown Hbrary or a pictured hall,
beginning a lecture. He moves about a little uneasily,
like the late William Morris, and as if he would rather
use deeds than words. An old book lies open before
him : now and then he turns over a page, reads to him-
self, and smiles. The conscientious undergraduate looks
at his watch and begins spoiling his pen upon the
blotting-paper. He comes to take notes ; but Urbanus
does not care. Suddenly the lecturer laughs heartily
at a good passage and begins : —
" I think perhaps you will like this story . . ."
And he reads, punctuating the matter with his own
lively appreciation. Somerville and Lady Margaret and
St. Hugh's look resigned ; future first (or third) class
men look contemptuous ; a Blue feels that his time is
being wasted, — he must complain, — he rises and walks
out as Urbanus remarks : —
" I don't know your name, sir, but you can sleep
here^ if you wish."
Urbanus closes the book five minutes before or after
the appointed hour ; some one mutters about " the worst
lecturer in this incubator of bad lecturers " : such is his
influence, not so much injecting knowledge as dredging
and maturing what is already gained, that others can
think of him easily as a humanist of the great days, who
has survived in his old college, with an indifference to mere
time which is not incredible in Oxford, where memories
three centuries old are still alive in oral tradition.
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Dons Ancient and Modern
VI
Philip Amberley, late fellow of , took it much to
heart that he was not born in 1300. He would have
been a monk, and would have illuminated Ovid to the
astonishment of all ages. All he could do in this age
was to perform his tutorial duty, and to write a f&w
pages of noble English in a caligraphy that was worthy
of the ages he loved. He wrote but one book, which
he burned, because nobody would give him ^5 for it.
A not very old or very credible story tells how an
intelligent alien blurted out the question, at the high
table of Philip's college : Whether the uncomely heads
before the Sheldonian Theatre were not the fellows of
that same college. The inquirer was corrected with
asperity ; and in revenge he always stated that he
afterwards received photographs of the younger fellows,
by way of removing the mote from his eye. But
Philip sent a photograph of the least human physiog-
nomy, signed with full name and college. For the
rest, he had that uncertainty of character which is
called conscience in the good and timidity in the bad,
and in him meant merely that he exchanged an act for
a dream. He was filled with a supreme pity, even for
the Devil, whom he called " that immortal scapegoat of
gods and men."
He died on an evening of July, while the scent of
hay in passing waggons filled and pleased his nostrils,
lying in his half-monastic, half-manorial home, not far
from Oxford. How often had he celebrated the sweet-
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Oxford
ness of the dead grass as an emblem of comely human
death ! For a little while he spoke of his friends, of
the " beautiful gate " of St. Mary's, of his columbines
(the older sort), and of a copy of Virgil newly come
from Italy. We listened silently. Life was still an
eloquent poet on his lips. But Death was a strong
sculptor already at work upon his face and hands. The
last waggon passed below his window as he lay dead,
and the friendly carter shouted " Good-night."
Now, we three were ashamed that we could find no
tears for the loss of such a man ; and again, that we
should suffer any alteration of our joy, at having seen
what we had seen. We recalled the past through half
the night. As we sat, none of us looked more alive
than he, amidst the old gloomy furniture, refashioned
by the moon. We were but the toys of night, of the
smooth perfumes and the sounds of nothing known,
and of the presence which was like a great thought in
the room. Then as the coming day mingled with the
passing night, a cold pale beam — w (f)do<; ayvov — came to
the four. As often a symbol becomes an image, so the
beam of light seemed to be the very spirit of which it
was a messenger, hailed by our eyes and hearts. It was
beautiful as the Grail with many angels about it, — awful
as the woman of stern aspect and burning eyes that
visited the dream of Boethius. It was worthy to have
ushered visions yet more august. Ah ! the awful
purity of the dawn. The light grew ; our fancies
were unbuilt ; we became aware of a holy excellence
in the light itself, and enjoyed an almost sensual
86
THE CLARENDON BUILDING. LOOKING
EAST
On the right stand those grotesque thermes partly
surrounding and forming an entrance to the enclosure
of the Sheldonian Theatre, the old Ashmolean, and
the Schools.
They arc a quaint and conspicuous feature in Broad
Street.
Above them towers the Clarendon Building, with
its worn and richly coloured surface, the columns of
the portico relieved against the sky. A portion of
the Indian Museum appears in the centre of the
picture, the old houses forming picturesque foreground
objects to the left.
Dons Ancient and Modern
melancholy repose. The owls were silent. The night-
ingales joined their songs to the larks'. And I went
out and walked and remembered his epitaph — Vita
dulcis^ sed dulcior mors — and another July day, when
Philip Amberley was alive.
How he would walk ! with what an air, an effluence,
humble, and of consequence withal ! Half the village
dallied among their flowers or beehives to see him
going. His long staff was held a foot from the upper
end, which almost entered his beard. He bore it, not
airily with twirling and fantastic motion, as our younger
generation likes to do, but solemnly, making it work,
and leaning on it as if it were a sceptre, a pillar, a
younger brother. His eyes appeared to study the
ground ; yet indeed all that was to be seen and much
that is commonly invisible lay within their sway. It
was said he kept eyes in his pockets. His shanks were
of the extreme tenuity that seems no more capable of
weariness than of being diminished. Returning or setting
forth, especially when seen against the sky at sunset or
dawn, he was a portent rather than a man. His person
was an emblem of human warfaring on earth — a hiero-
glyph — a monument. His movements were of epic
significance. His beard did not merely wag ; it trans-
acted great matters. In setting out he himself said he
never contemplated return ; it was unnecessary ; at
most it was one of several possibilities. Yet had he a
big laugh that came from his beard like a bell from
a grey tower. He would even sing as he walked,
and was the sole appreciator of his own rendering
87
Oxford
of ''The All Souls' Mallard," in a broken, grim
baritone.
All day we walked along an ancient Oxfordshire
road. It was the most roundabout and kindly way
towards our end, and so disguised our purpose that we
forgot it. The road curved not merely as a highway
does. Demurring, nicely distinguishing between good
and better, rashly advancing straight, coyly meandering,
it had fallen in love with its own foibles, and its
progress was not to be measured by miles. At one
loop (where the four arms of a battered signpost all
pointed to — nowhere) the first man who trod this way
must have paused to think, or not to think, and have
lost all aim save perambulation. So it stole through
the land without arresting the domesticities of the quiet
hills. Often it was not shut out from the fields by
hedge or fence or bank. For some leagues it became
a footpath — its second childhood — " as though a rose
should shut and be a bud again" — with grass and
flowers unavoidable under foot and floating briers and
hops overhead. In places the hedges had united and
unmade the road. From every part of it some church
could be seen : Philip would sometimes enter in, having
some faith in the efiicacy of reverence ofi^ered by stealth
on these uncanonical holy days. On our way he
sometimes paused, where bees made a wise hum in
glowing gardens ; or where the corn-shocks looked like
groups of women covered by their yellow hair, as the
sun ascended ; or where the eye slumbered, and yet not
senselessly or in vain, amidst a rich undistinguished
Dons Ancient and Modern
landscape, made unreal and remote by mist ; and he
would whisper an oath or a line of Theocritus or
a self-tormenting speech — "Six hundred years ago
perhaps one of my name passed along this road. Oh !
for one hour of his joy as he spied* his inn, or carved a
cross in the church of St. John, or kissed the milkmaid
at yonder gateway. Or would that I could taste his
grief, even ; his fresh and lively grief, I think, had
something in it which my pale soul is sick for. For
me the present is made of the future and the past.
But he — perhaps — he could say, ' Here am I with a
can of mead and a fatigue that will do honour to my
lavendered sheets ; Ave Maria ! here's to you all ! ' "
Yet Philip's mood was not seldom as clear and simple
as that.
At the inn — a classic inn to Oxford scholars — while
the wind was purring in a yew tree, he put all his
gloomier fancies in a tankard, where they were trans-
muted by a lambent ale and the " flaming ramparts "
of that small world. The landlord was unloading a
dray. As it is with men and clothes, remarked Philip,
so with ale ; the one grace of new ale is that it will one
day be old. " May I," he said, " in some world or
another, be at least as old as this tankard, in the course
of time : if I deserve it, as old as this inn : if I can, as
old as these hills, with their whiskers of yew. Or, so
long as I am not solitary, may I be as old as the sun,
which alone of all visible things has obviously reached
a fine old age ! " He told me that his only valued
dream was of an immemorial man, seated on a star near
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Oxford
the zenith ; and his beard's point swept the hilltops,
while with one hand he raised a goblet as large as the
dome of the Radcliffe to his lips, and with the other
stroked his beard and caused golden coins to flow in
cascades into the countless hands of those underneath ;
and in a melodious bass he said continually, " It is
well."
In his youth he had wedded Poverty, and when in
the course of nature she forsook him, he gently trans-
ferred his heart to Humility, regretting only that he
could no longer dress badly or make his own toast,
without affectation. He would give a beggar a hand-
ful of tobacco, and ask sincerely, " Is it enough .'' " At
the inn, he might have been lightly treated for the
respect with which he shamed the most unhappy out-
cast, if he had not indifferently accepted the homage of
the squire.
" Which book of the yEneid,'' said that magnate of
fifteen stone, at seeing a Virgil in his hand, " do you
like best } "
" The sixth."
" And why .? "
" Because I have just read it over again."
" And which do you like next } "
" The second, because I read it first, and loved it
(I was twelve) better than anything but rackets."
So he turned to the five tramps, the first I ever saw
leave their hats undoffed at his approach, who sat
opposite.
They spoke, proclaiming themselves human ; but
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Dons Ancient and Modern
their clothes, their twisted bodies, and their gnarled,
grey, bare feet, seemed to be the original material from
which some power had adventured to carve their
desperate faces, and then desisted in alarm, lest it should
make a gnome. They might seem to have newly
risen out of the soil, with all its lugubrious dishonours
about them, and in an elder world might have com-
manded the reverence of simple men, as Chthonian
apparitions. I have seen dead pollard -willows like
them, and rocks out of which the sea has wrought
figures more humane. " Pedestalled haply in a palace
court," they would have amazed the curious and con-
founded the wise ; drinking beer at " The Pilgrim's
Chair," they happened to agree with PhiHp's " idea of
a wild man," which he had treasured on a dusty
Platonic shelf of his mind for fifty years. The
urpflanze found at last could not bring a finer joy to a
botanist than they to him. His mind wandered about
his discovery. " These great men " — he said — " are the
victims of a community that permits nobody to break
its own law, and is indignant that a poacher or a thief
should claim the foregone privilege. On these men
falls the duty of keeping up the capacity of our race
for breaking law — a natural capacity. I should like to
see — fill the pot, landlord — something like the American
arbor-day established in this fine country. On that
day men should plant, not a tree, but a wild emotion.
Not all of us, alas ! could find one to plant. But such
a wild man's day would be a noble opportunity for the
divine instincts that are now reheved or ill- fed by
91
Oxford
politics, fiction, religious reform, and so on. I am for
a more than Stuart, indulgent, anti-parliament govern-
ment on one day, when the policeman should clink
tankards with the tramp, as if he too were a man. See
here ! " — he mildly concluded, exposing the unwilling
palm of the nearest tramp, — " this good fellow is so
appreciative that he has taken my coppers and left the
silver in my purse." Ordering the landlord to fill
tankards all round — "for this gentleman," he said,
pointing to the pickpocket — he soon made the whole
party harmonious, eloquent, and gay.
He spoke few words. His Virgil lay open still.
Now and then his random speech or a laugh at a bad
jest floated joyously — like lemons in a punch-bowl —
over the company. Every one astonished every one with
shrewd or witty things. Not a man but thought him-
self almost as fine a fellow as Philip Amberley. Not a
man but on leaving him was a little abashed as he took
a last glance at my friend, and saw what manner of
man he was.
"There he goes," said Philip solemnly, as he leaned
forward to watch them reeling up the lane, singing as
if their feet were shod and their pockets full, "There
he goes — an almost perfect man. I seem to see them
as one man, made up of the virtues or unselfish vices
(which are all the most of us can achieve) of all five,
as a painter collects a beautiful face from many
mediocrities. Every one of them has his fustian soul
' trimmed with curious lace.' " And so he continued ;
with generous and cunning speech freeing of rust, nay !
92
ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, FROM TURL
STREET
All Saints' Church was built in 1708 from a design
by Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church. The tower,
lantern, and spire, which appear in the picture, are
well proportioned.
There are some ancient half-timbered buildings on
the right, and between them and the Church tower,
at the south end of Turl Street, is a glimpse of the
High Street.
North of the nave of the Church, along "The
Turl," shows a portion of the buildings of Lincoln
College.
Dons Ancient and Modern
burnishing, the unused virtue in these abjects. " I have
avoided what is called vice," he said, " because it is so
easy, and I do not love easy things ; " and for the same
reason he frowned but tenderly on those who had not
avoided it.
While the sunlight was failing, we were left by our-
selves. But Philip was not alone. He had laid his
book and ale aside, and looked at the solemn row of
empty chairs against the wall. His eyes wore the
creative look of eyes that apprehend more than is
visible. In those chairs he beheld seated what he called
his Loves — the very faces and hair and hands of his
dead friends. I have heard him say that they appeared
" in their old coats." Night after night they revisited
him — " of terrible aspect," yet sweet and desirable.
They were as saints are to men whose religion is of
another name than his. He could say and act nothing
which those faces approved not, or which those faint
hands would have stayed. Embroidered by the day
upon the border of the night, their life was an hour.
Out of doors he saw them, too, in well-loved places —
gateways above Hinksey, hilltops at Cumnor or Dor-
chester, Christ Church groves, or fitting Oxford streets
— such as (he believed) had something in them which
they owed to his passionate contemplation in their
midst. There he heard them speak softlier than the
wings of fritillaries in Bagley Wood. Si quis amat
novit quid hac vox clamat. . . . But his own face comes
not to satisfy the longing of those who watch as faith-
fully, with eyes dimmer or of less felicity.
93
Oxford
ThE Past
The Oxford graduate of the past is far too pale a
ghost in Hterature. He lies in old books, like a broken
sculpture waiting to be reconstructed, and survives but
in an anecdote and from his importance after leaving
Oxford for a bishopric or a civil place. For one
memory of a Don there are a hundred of soldiers,
statesmen, priests, in the quadrangles and streets. He
is in danger of being treated as merely the writer of a
quaint page among the records of the college muniment-
room. Erasmus, Fuller, Wood, Tom Warton, pre-
serve and partly reveal the spirit of the past, and help
us to call up something of the lusty, vivid life which
the fellows and canons and presidents led in their
" days of nature." There is, for example, a Dean of
Christ Church, afterwards Bishop of Oxford and last
of Norwich, who has still the breath of life in him, on
John Aubrey's page.
I
He was " very facetious and a good fellow," and
Ben Jonson's friend. When a Master of Arts, if not
a Bachelor of Divinity, he was often merry at a good
ale parlour in Friar Bacon's study, that welcomed
Pepys and stood till 1779. It was rumoured that the
building would fall if a more learned man than Bacon
entered, a mischance of which the Dean had no fear.
When he was a Doctor of Divinity *' he sang ballads at
the Cross at Abingdon on a market-day." The usual
94
Dons Ancient and Modern
ballad-singer could not compete with such a rival, and
complained that he sold no ballads. Whereat " the
jolly Doctor put off his gown and put on the ballad-
singer's leathern jacket, and being a handsome man,
and had a rare full voice," he had a great audience and
a great sale of sheets. His conversation was " extreme
pleasant." He and Dr. Stubbinge, a corpulent Canon
of Christ Church, were riding in a dirty lane, when the
coach was overturned. " Dr. Stubbinge," said the
Dean, " was up to his elbows in mud, but I was up to
the elbows in Stubbinge." He was a verse-maker, of
considerable reputation, of some wit and abundant
mirth, with a quaint looking backward upon old places
and old times that is almost pathetic in these verses : —
Farewell rewards and fairies.
Good housewives now may say.
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do.
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe ?
Lament, lament, old abbeys,
The fairies' lost command ;
They did but change priests' babies,
But some have changed your land ;
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now grown Puritans ;
Who live as changelings ever since,
For love of your domains.
When Bishop of Oxford, he had " an admirable,
grave, and venerable aspect." But his pontifical state
95
Oxford
permitted some humanities, and he was married to a
pretty wife. " One time," says Aubrey, " as he was
confirming, the country people pressing in to see the
ceremony, said he, ' Bear off there, or I'll confirm you
with my staff.' Another time, being about to lay his
hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his
chaplain (Lushington) and said, ' Some dust, Lushing-
ton ' (to keep his hand from slipping)." He and Dr.
Lushington, of Pembroke College, " a very learned and
ingenious man," would sometimes lock themselves in
the wine-cellar. Then he laid down first his episcopal
hat, with, " There lies the doctor " ; next, his gown,
with, " There lies the bishop ' ; and then 'twas " Here's
to thee, Corbet " and " Here's to thee, Lushington."
Three years after attaining the bishopric of Norwich he
died. " Good-night, Lushington," were his last words.
II
There is also in Aubrey another such ruddy memory
of a fine old gentleman — a scholar, a thoughtful and
genial governor of youth, " a right Church of England
man," and President of Trinity. In gown and surplice
and hood " he had a terrible gigantic aspect, with his
sharp grey eyes " and snowy hair. He had a rich,
digressive mind, " like a hasty pudding, where there
was memory, judgment, and fancy all stirred together,"
not suited to his day ; and began a sermon happily, but
not at all to Aubrey's taste : —
" Being my turn to preach in this place, I went into
96
TRINITY COLLEGE
The entrance to the College is under the tower at the
west end of the Chapel, which appears towards the
right of the picture.
The architecture of the Chapel is worthy of being
seen, though the covering of green prevents this — a
custom carried to excess in Oxford buildings.
Opposite, at the extreme left, is a portion of the
east end of the Chapel of Balliol College, and the trees
are standing in that remnant of an old orchard front-
ing the Broad which forms the spacious approach to
Trinity College.
Dons Ancient and Modern
my study to prepare myself for my sermon, and I took
down a book that had blue strings, and looked in it,
and 'twas sweet Saint Bernard. I chanced to read such
a part of it, on such a subject, which has made me
to choose this text. . . ."
He concluded, says Aubrey : —
" ' But now I see it is time for me to shut up my
book, for I see the doctors' men come in wiping of
their beards from the ale-house.' He could from the
pulpit plainly see them, and 'twas their custom in
sermon to go there, and about the end of sermon to
return to wait on their masters."
Undergraduates who pleased him not were warned
that he might " bring an hour-glass two hours long "
into the hall. He was inexorable towards wearers of
long hair, and would cut it off with " the knife that
chips the bread on the buttery hatch." It was his
fashion to peep through key-holes in order to find out
idlers. Says one : " He scolded the best in Latin of
any one that ever he knew." It seemed to him good
discipline to keep at a high standard the beer of Trinity,
because he observed that *' the houses that had the
smallest beer had most drunkards, for it forced them to
go into the town to comfort their stomachs." Yet in
his exhortations to a temperate life, he admitted that
the men of his college " ate good commons and drank
good double beer, and that will get out." And he was
a man of tender and exquisite charity. When he saw
that a diligent scholar was also poor, " he would many
times put money in at his window," and gave work in
97 7
Oxford
transcription to servitors who wrote a good hand. His
right foot dragged somewhat upon the ground, so that
" he gave warning (Hke the rattlesnake) of his coming,"
and an imitative wag of the college " would go so like
him that sometimes he would make the whole chapel
rise up, imagining he had been entering in." The
Civil War, thinks Aubrey, killed the old man, just
before he would have been fifty years President. For
it " much grieved him that was wont to be so absolute
in the college to be affronted and disrespected by rude
soldiers." The cavaliers and their ladies invaded the
college grove to the sound of lute or theorbo. Some
of the gaudy women even came, " half dressed, like
angels," to morning chapel. A foot-soldier broke the
President's hour-glass. So he gathered his old russet
cloth gown about him and closed his eyes upon the
calamity and died, still a fresh and handsome old man.
Ill
John Earle, a notable scholar and divine of the
seventeenth century, a fellow of Merton, and afterwards
Bishop of Worcester and Bishop of Salisbury, has drawn
the picture of " a downright scholar," which I may
not omit. Earle had the most concentrated style of
any man of his time ; each of his sentences is a docu-
ment. His characters are as clear and firm as the
brasses on Merton altar platform, and likely to endure
as long.
" A downright scholar," he writes, *' is one that has
98
INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY OF MERTON
COLLEGE
The newel posts, balusters, and hand-rails of the
staircase leading to the ground- floor show in the
centre of the picture, to tlie right and left of which are
bookcases and the quaint "Jacobean " screens peculiar
to this Library.
The ribbed barrel roof is covered with timber, the
dormer windows which light the Library appearing on
the left, over the staircase.
An old oak coffer, bound with iron, is placed to the
left of the staircase.
Dons Ancient and Modern
much learning in the ore, unwrought and untried, which
time and experience fashions and refines. He is good
metal in the inside, though rough and unscoured with-
out, and therefore hated of the courtier that is quite
contrary. The time has got the vein of making him
ridiculous, and men laugh at him by tradition, and no
unlucky absurdity but is put upon his profession, and
done like a scholar. But his fault is only this, that his
mind is somewhat much taken up with his mind, and
his thoughts not laden with any carriage besides. He
has not put on the quaint garb of the age, which is
now become a man's total. He has not humbled his
meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted
his brain in an elaborate leg. His body is not set
upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every
motion, but his scrape is homely, and his nod worse.
He cannot kiss his hand and cry Madam, nor talk idly
enough to bear her company. His smacking of a
gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes
her nose for her lip. A very woodcock would puzzle
him in carving, and he wants the logic of a capon.
He has not the glib faculty of gliding over a tale, but
his words come squeamishly out of his mouth, and the
laughter commonly before the jest. He names this
word College too often, and his discourse beats too
much on the University. The perplexity of mannerli-
ness will not let him feed, and he is sharp set at an
argument when he should cut his meat. He is dis-
carded for a gamester at all games but ' one and thirty,'
and at tables he reaches not beyond doublets. His
99
Oxford
fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle,
but his fist is clenched with the habit of disputing.
He ascends a horse somewhat sinisterly, though not on
the left side, and they both go jogging in grief together.
He is exceedingly censured by the Inns of Court men
for that heinous vice being out of fashion. He cannot
speak to a dog in his own dialect, and understands
Greek better than the language of a falconer. He has
been used to a dark room, and dark clothes, and his
eyes dazzle at a satin doublet. The hermitage of his
study makes him somewhat uncouth in the world, and
men make him worse by staring on him. Thus he is
silly and ridiculous, and it continues with him for some
quarter of a year, out of the University. But practise
him a little in men, and brush him over with good
company, and he shall outbalance those glisterers as
much as a solid substance does a feather, or gold gold
lace." One story is told of him. He was sharp-
tempered and much beloved ; his servitor was endeared
to his faults, and inquired respectfully one day why
his master had not boxed his ears. To which he replied
" that he thought he had done so ; but indeed he had
forgot many things that day " ; it being the day of
Charles I.'s execution. Whereat the servitor wept, and
received the admonition unexpectedly for his pains.
lOO
UNDERGRADUATES OF THE
PRESENT AND THE PAST
CHAPTER IV
undergraduates of the present and the past
The Present
What a thing it is to be an undergraduate of the
University of Oxford ! Next to being a great poet or
a financier, there is nothing so absolute open to a man.
For several years he is the nursling of a great tradition
in a fair city : and the memory of it is above his chief
joy. His follies are hallowed, his successes exalted, by
the dispensation of the place. Surely the very air
whispers of wisdom and the beautiful, he thinks —
Planius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit !
That time is the one luxury he never regrets. It is a
second childhood, as blithe and untroubled as the first,
and with this advantage over the first : that it is not
only good, but he knows that it is good. What
games ! what books ! what walks ! what affections !
are his. Time passes, we say, although it is we —
like children that see the square fields receding from
their swift train — that pass. Yet, with these things in
Oxford, he seems to lure time a little way with him
103
Oxford
upon the road. The liberty of a man and the license
of a child are his together. Of course, he abuses them.
He uses them, too. Hence the admirable independence
of the undergraduate, which has drawn upon him the
excommunication of those whose concern is with the
colour and cut of clothes. He is the only true
Bohemian, because he cannot help it — does not try to
be — and does not know it. He is the true Democrat,
and condescension is far less common than servility
in his domain. He alone keeps quite inviolate the
principle of freedom of speech. It is indeed true that,
as anywhere else, fools are exclusive as regards clever
men and different kinds of fools ; and snobs, as regards
all but themselves. But theirs is a rare and lonely life.
At Christ Church they have actually a pool, in the
centre of their great quadrangle, for the baptism of
those who have not learned these fine traditions ; it is
appropriately called after Mercury, to whom men used
to sacrifice pigs, and especially lambs and young goats.
And there is no college in Oxford where any but
the incompatible are kept apart, and few where that
distinction is really preserved. As befits a prince in
his own palace, the undergraduate usually dispenses
with hypocrisy and secrecy, and thus gives an oppor-
tunity to the imaginative stranger. Such an one drew
a lurid picture of a horde of wealthy bacchanals, making
night hideous with the tormenting of a poor scholar.
It was not said whether the sufferer was in the habit of
doing nasty and dishonourable things, or had funked
at football, or worn ringlets over his collar : it was
104
CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE— TOM
QUADRANGLE
The front of the picture is occupied by part of the
basin of the fountain, from the centre of which rises
a pedestal bearing a figure in bronze of " Mercury "
(restored). In reality the figure no longer shows
above the water-lilies in the basin, but engravings of
views of the Quadrangle in the eighteenth century, in
which a figure of Mercury appears, are still to be
seen, and the fountain was once called " The Mercury."
The entrance gateway to the College and a portion
of Tom Tower appear in the background.
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
almost certainly one of the remarkable efforts of im-
agination which are frequently devoted to that famous
city and its inhabitants. The patience of the under-
graduate is extreme. It is extended to tradesmen and
to the sounds of the Salvation Army. He greets
bimetallists with tenderness, teetotallers with awe, and
vegetarians with a kind of rapture, tempered by a rare
spurt of scientific inquiry. If he makes an exception
against sentimentalism, he relents in favour of that
place, "so late their happy seat," when he goes down.
Mr. Belloc has put that retrospection classically : —
The wealth of youth, we spent it well
And decently, as very few can.
And is it lost ? I cannot tell,
And what is more, I doubt if you can. . . .
They say that in the unchanging place.
Where all we loved is always dear.
We meet our morning face to face,
And find at last our twentieth year. . . .
They say (and I am glad they say)
It is so ; and it may be so :
It may be just the other way ;
I cannot tell. But this I know :
From quiet homes and first beginning.
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning.
But laughter and the love of friends.
But something dwindles, oh ! my peers.
And something cheats the heart and passes.
And Tom that meant to shake the years
Has come to merely rattling glasses.
105
Oxford
And He, the Father of the Flock,
Is keeping Burmesans in order,
An exile on a lonely rock.
That overlooks the Chinese border.
And one (myself I mean — no less),
Ah ! will Posterity believe it —
Not only don't deserve success,
But hasn't managed to achieve it.
Not even this peculiar town
Has ever fixed a friendship firmer.
But — one is married, one's gone down.
And one's a Don, and one's in Burmah.
And oh ! the days, the days, the days.
When all the four were off together ;
The infinite deep of summer haze.
The roaring boast of autumn weather !
I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone.
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone.
But I will sit beside the fire,
And put my hands before my eyes,
And trace, to fill my heart's desire.
The last of all our Odysseys.
The quiet evening kept the tryst :
Beneath an open sky we rode,
And mingled with a wandering mist
Along the perfect Evenlode. . . .
I
The average man seldom gets into a book, though
he often writes one. Yet who would not like to paint
him or have him painted, for once and for ever ! And,
a fortiori^ who would not wish the same for the average
1 06
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
undergraduate ? I can but hint at his glories, as in an
architect's elevation. For he is neither rich nor poor,
neither tall nor short, neither of aristocratic birth nor
ignobly bred. Briefly, Providence has shielded him
from the pain and madness of extremes. He plays
football, cricket, rackets, hockey, golf, tennis, croquet,
whist, poker, bridge. In neither will he excel ; yet in
some one he will for an hour be conspicuous, if only at
a garden-party or on a village green. He never rashly
ventures in the matter of dress, and when his friends who
are above the average are wearing very green tweeds,
he will be just green enough to be passable, and yet
so subdued as not to be questioned by those who stick
to grey. He is never punctual ; on the other hand, he
is never very late. In conversation, he will avoid
eloquence for fear of long-windedness, and silence for
fear of appearing original or rude : at most, he will be
frivolous to the extent of remarking, about a pretty
face, ' Oh, she is alpha plus ! ' As a freshman only
will he make any great mistakes. Thus, he will have
several meerschaums ; will assemble at a wine party the
most incompatible men, and conclude it by all but
losing his self-respect ; and will for a term use Oxford
slang as if it were a chosen tongue, and learn a few
witticisms at the expense of shopkeepers, if he is free
by the accident of birth. But he will speedily forget
these things and become a person with blunt and tender
consideration for others, and may be popular because
of his excellent cigarettes or his ready listening. He
will in a few years learn to row honestly, if not
107
Oxford
brilliantly ; to know what is fitting to be said and read
in the matter of books ; to discuss the theatre, the
government, the cricket season, in an inoffensive way.
Add to this pale vision the colouring impHed by a
college hat -band and a decent, ruddy face, and you
have the not too vigorous or listless, manly man, with
modest bearing and fearless voice, who plays his part
so well in life, and now and then — on a punt, or at
a wedding — reveals to the discerning observer his
university. The late Grant Allen knew him by his
broad, brown back, and his habit of bathing in winter
in a rough sea.
II
He has come to Oxford, much as a man of old
would have come to some fabled island, out beyond the
pillars of Hercules ; for even so Oxford is out beyond
the world which he knows —
The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours
Thither all their bounties bring.
Perhaps his schoolmasters have been Oxford men.
But that has not disillusioned him. He has been in
the habit of thinking of them as men who, for some
fault or misfortune, have come back from the fortunate
islands, discontented or empty. They have not known
how to use the place : he knows, or will learn to know ;
and he dreams of it in his peaceful country school, or
at a London school, where boys go as to a place of
business, and make verses as others cast accounts. To
io8
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
some Oxford men, Matthew Arnold's " Thyrsis " is
the finest poem that was ever written ; and he knows
it by heart already ; has sighed ignorantly over it ;
and as his train draws near to Oxford, he repeats it to
himself, with a most fantastic fervour, as if it were
half a prayer and half a love-song, and certainly more
than half his own. The pleasant excited uncertainty, as
to whether he has seen the Fyfield elm, or whether that
oaken slope was Cumnor, and his happy surmises while
his eye skips from tower to tower in the distance, blind
him to the drizzling, holiday air of the platform : he
has no time to remember how it differs from East-
bourne : he is so set upon beholding the High Street
that he is indifferent to the tram and the mean streets,
and is not reminded of Wandsworth. The cabman is
to him a supernal, Olympian cabman. He pays the
man heavily, and quotes from Sophocles as he steps
through the lodge gate, amid the greetings of porter,
messenger, and a scout or two. The magnificent
quadrangle gives a dignity to his walk that is laughable
to senior men. He goes from room to room, making
his choice, and knows not whether to be attracted by
the spaciousness of one suite, or the miniature sufficiency
of another, — the wainscot of a third, the traditions of a
fourth, or the view from a fifth.
In the evening, at dinner in the college hall, he
puts all of his emotion into the grace before meat, and
by his slow, loving utterance robs the fellows of their
chairs and the undergraduates of their talk. He scans
curiously the healthy or clever or human faces of his
T09
Oxford
contemporaries at the table. As all visible things are
symbols, he supposes that something, which he is too
inexperienced to understand, distinguishes these youths
from the others with similar faces in London or else-
where. He answers a few questions about his school
and his athletic record. Then he falls back upon the
coats of arms and the founders' portraits on the walls,
and is glad when he has returned to his room. There,
the unpacking and arrangement of a hundred books
fill the hours until long after midnight. For he kneels
and opens and reads a page, and dreams and reopens,
and goes to the window, to listen or watch. Not a
book but he finds flat and uninspired, and quite un-
worthy of his first Oxford night. He wants something
more megalophonous than De Quincey, more perfect
than Pater, more fantastic than Browne, more sweet than
Newman, — something that shall be witty, spiritual, gay,
and solemn in a breath, — something in short that was
never yet written by pen and ink, although often in-
spired by a night like this.
The eager hours and unreluctant years
As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood,
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
Darkening each other with their multitude,
And cried aloud, Liberty !
And so he sleeps ; but in spite of his great dreams,
he is not disappointed when he looks out upon the
glorious company of the spires and towers of Oxford.
He rises early, and is surprised when he meets only
the college cat in the quadrangle, and the gate is
no
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
shut. But he returns quite cheerfully to his room,
to read Virgil while the dreamy sky is still tender
with the parting touch of night.
After breakfast, and some disbursements to porter
and scout, he begins to make acquaintances, over a
newspaper in the junior common room, or at a pre-
liminary visit to his tutor. With one, he walks up
and down High Street : he learns which are the
tailors and which are not. With another, he goes
out to Parson's Pleasure, and likes the willows of
Mesopotamia, and sees New College Tower : he wants
to loiter in the churchyard of Holy Cross, but is
scornfully reminded that Byron did much the same.
Queen's College inspires his companion with the re-
mark that Queen in Oxford is called " Quagger."
The Martyr's Memorial calls forth " Maggers Me-
mugger"; Worcester, " Wuggins" ; Jesus, " Jaggers " :
and he is much derided when he supposes that the
scouts use these terms.
After luncheon, he cannot get free, but must watch
football or the humours of " tubbing " on the river.
His companions, with all the easy omniscience of
public -school boys, are so busy telling him what's
what, that he learns little of what is. And at tea,
he is as wise as they, and has the tired emotion of one
who has been through fairyland on a motor car.
A week in this style broadens his horizon ; his
optimism, still strong, embraces mankind and excludes
most men. A series of teas with senior men and a
crowd of contemporaries fails to exhilarate him. The
III
Oxford
shy are silent : the rest talk about their schools ;
appear advanced men of the world ; and shock their
seniors, who in their turn dispense tales about dons,
and useful information : and he feels ashamed to be
silent and contemptuous of what is said. His grace in
hall has become so portentous that his neighbour hums
the Dead March in Saul by way of accompaniment.
With some misgiving he goes alone to his room,
sports his oak — which others so often do for him when
he is out — and puts his room in order. His college
shield, brilliantly and incorrectly blazoned, hangs above
the door. Photographs of his newest acquaintances
rest for the time upon his desk. He has not yet
learned to respect the photograph of a Botticelli above
the mantelpiece, and has tucked under its frame a
caricature of some college worthy, with visiting-cards,
notes of invitation, a table of work, and his first menu.
On the mantelpiece are photographs that recall tenderer
things, along with his meerschaum and straight-grained
briar. For a minute he is interrupted by a kick, an
undeniable shout, a cigar, and behind it the captain of
Rugby football.
" Can you play } " says the captain.
" I have never tried," says the freshman, modestly.
The captain retires, after conferring an indignity in
pert monosyllables, and familiarly inquiring after " all
your aunts."
" How do you know I have any aunts, Mr. } "
he inquires.
" Oh," replies the captain, " I never heard of a
112
HOLYWELL CHURCH
Holywell is the Campo Santo of Oxtord, and many
names famous in her history are found there.
The almost ruined cottage and desolate garden
make a suitable foreground.
The view is from the north-west.
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
nephew without an aunt, and I am sure you couldn't
do without several."
" I wonder why he came to Oxford," reflects the
freshman.
" He's mistaken his calling," chuckles the other
on the way downstairs.
The freshman lights his meerschaum (holding it in
a silk handkerchief), and begins to make a plan for
three or four years. But he never completes it. He
beheves Oxford to be as a fine sculptor, and wishes to put
himself in its hands in such a way as to be best shapen
by the experience, in a "wise passiveness." He wants
to be a scholar, and fears to be a pedant. He wants
to learn a wise and graceful habit with his fellow-men,
and fears to be what he hears called a gentleman. He
wants to test his enthusiasm and prejudices, and fears
to be a Philistine. He wants to taste pleasure
delicately, and fears to be a viveur or an aesthete.
None of these aims is altogether conscious or precise ;
yet it is some such combination that he sees before
him, faint and possible, at the end of three or four
years. Nor has he any aim beyond that. He will
work, but at what? Neither has he realised that he
will be alone and unhelped.
At first the loneliness is a great, and even at times
a delirious, pleasure ; and whether he is in a church,
or in the fields, or among books, it is almost sensual,
and never critical, Oxford is, as it were, doing his
living for him. He is as powerless to influence the
passage of his days as to plan the architecture of his
113 8
Oxford
dreams. He only awakens at his meals with con-
temporaries, and sometimes at interviews with tutors.
The former find him dull and superior. The latter
tell him that in his work he is indeed gathering honey,
but filling no combs ; and find him ungainly and
vague. He consoles himself with the reflection that
he is not becoming a pedant or a careless liver. He
writes verses to celebrate the melodious days he lives.
All influences of men fall idly upon him —
They on us were rolled
But kept us not awake.
The digressive habit of mind not only grows upon
him ; he cultivates it. His tutor says that it is
impossible to give a title to his best essays. Long,
lonely evenings with books only encourage the habit.
But he can defend it, and laughs at criticism.
Shakespeare's dramas, he says, flow through the
centuries, like the Nile ; his flood is not so vast, that
it may not be aggrandised by many a tributary. It
has come down to us vaster than when it reached
Milton or Gray, not only by definite commentary,
but by the shy emotions of a myriad readers. We
add to it, he says triumphantly, by our digressions ; and
what revelation it may make in consequence, to a far
future generation, we cannot guess. In his pursuit of
words, which soon enthrall him, he goes far, rather
than deep. Wherever the word has been cherished for
its own sake, in all *' decadent " literature, he makes his
mind a home. He begins to write, but in a style
114
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
which, along with his ornate penmanship, would occupy
a lifetime, and result in one brochure or half a dozen
sonnets. It is a kind of higher philately. But it takes him
to strange and fascinating byways in literature. He
loves the grotesque. Now and then, he lets fall a quota-
tion or even a dissertation on such a book at dinner,
and suddenly he is launched into popularity.
First he is hailed as a decadent, and shrinks. When
the shrinking is over, he secretly falls in love with the
half-contemptuous title, and seeks others who accept it.
Now he is never by himself. Those with whom he
has no sympathies like him because he happens to
know Pantagruel and a few books such as some under-
graduates keep between false covers. His room is
fragrant with unseasonable flowers, with the perfume
of burning juniper, burning cassia, and cedar, and sweet
oils. What if the honourable ghosts of Oxford frown
upon his strange devotions ^ He is at least living a
life that could not persist elsewhere. At chapel, he is
reading Theophrastus. He is studying an undercurrent
of the Italian Renaissance at a lecture on Thucydides. As
if he were to live for ever, and in Oxford, his existence
is such that his stay in Oxford or in life becomes
precarious. He is reputed to be a connoisseur in wines,
pictures, and sixteenth -century furniture. He is a
Roman Catholic by profession, an agnostic by convic-
tion ; yet no religion or superstition is quite safe
from his patronage. He mistakes the recrudescence
of childishness for a sad and wise maturity. Fresh-
men are struck by his listless gaiety and the unkind
Oxford
and seeming wise solemnity of his light expressions.
If to sit sumptuous and still, to discourse melodiously
of everything or nothing, to be courteous, sentimental,
cold, and rude in turns, were wisdom, he is wise. He
acquires the lofty cynicism of the under-informed and
the over-fed. He can talk with ease and point, about
the merely married don, about virtue as the fine which
the timid pay to the bold, about the dulness of enthusiasm
and the strange beauty of grey. At what is temperate
and modest he throws satire with a bitterness enhanced
by a secret affection for what he lapidates. Like a
man who should paint an angel and call it a thief, he
narrowly pursues his own choicest veiled gifts with a
malicious word. In short, his brilliant conversation
proves how much easier it is to think what one says
than to say what one thinks. Yet is he now a harder
student than he has ever been, and allows nothing to
disturb him at his books. He has nodded at European
literatures through half their courses, in the lonely hours
when his companions are asleep. He is planning again,
and realises that it would be a showy thing to get a
first class. His conversation becomes gloomy as well
as bitter. People suspect that he means what he says ;
and he mutters in explanation that experience is the
basis of life and the ruin of philosophies. His friends
simply accept the remark as untrue. He is now often
reduced to silence among those who sleep well. He
no longer pours a current of fresh and illuminating
thought upon things which he not only does not under-
stand, but does not care for, in politics or art.
ii6
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
He slips out of brilliant company, to enter occasionally
among religious circles where they are tolerant of lost
sheep, and has begun to pay his smaller bills and to
find out what books he must read for a degree, when
the examination day arrives. Then he borrows his old
dignified look of indolence in the sultry schools, while
he writes hard, and secures a second class by means of a
legible handwriting, clear style, and amusing irrelevance.
He goes down, alone, still with a fascinating tongue,
desperate, and yet careless of success, ready to do anything
so long as he can escape comfortable and conventional
persons, and quite unable to be anything conspicuous,
but a man who has been to the garden of the Hesperides
and brought back apples that he alone can make appear
to be golden in his rare moments of health.
Ill
He is one who knows that three or four years at the
University is a good investment. He comes up with
an open scorn of idlers, both gilded and gifted. Whether
he is clever and successful or not, he has a suspicion
that dons are underworked, colleges expensive hotels
or worse, and is determined to change all that. Not
infrequently such a one is perverted by a happy evening
with a few acquaintances, early in his first term. If he
is not, he is a white elephant. The dons are alarmed
by his instructions, the undergraduates by his clothes.
"If this were not an old conservative creek," he seems
to say, " promotion would go by merit, and I should
117
Oxford
soon be at the top of the tree and begin repairs." But
the University remains unchanged.
He looks about him for a more stealthy passage to
his ends.
A vernal impulse, it may be, sends him to a tailor's
shop, and in the unwonted resplendence that follows
he is almost a butterfly. In a jocular spirit he calls
upon the persons whose invitations he used to ignore.
If he is clever or amusing, or apparently labouring
under a delusion, he is liked. In his turn he is called
upon. He begins to find that there is something in
himself which has a taste for all that is human. Homo
sum, he mutters, with one of the classical quotations
which are to his taste. He will dally with the multitude
for an hour or two, — a week, — why not for a term }
When he is in the company of the sons of old or
wealthy families, it occurs to him that rank and weahh
are powerful : it follows, and can be demonstrated, that
the power cannot be more justly exercised than in the
furthering of honest and meritorious poverty. He
will make a concession ; possibly another visit to a
tailor ; perhaps a little champagne. Several discoveries
follow.
It would be not only difficult, but contemptible, to
play football or to row ; yet he can learn to play lawn
tennis. He is presently quite at home, if not in love,
at garden parties. He mistakes the curious interest of
men and women, in one who is entirely different from
themselves, for a compliment to his adaptability.
Society bores him rapidly. He has had enough of
ii8
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
vacation visits and picnics during the term, and revives
his acquaintance with work and the indolent fellows.
But that is not necessarily attractive. Also, his .friends
and admirers will not let him disappear ; and he returns
to frivolity in a serious and plotting spirit. He tolerates
nearly every one, and in particular the influential. They
cultivate him, clearly, for his inteUigence, his independ-
ence, his originality. Why should he not cultivate
them for their own petty endowment } He enters
office at the Union. He is elected to presidentships,
secretaryships.
He is lucky if he does not learn from others — what
he will not easily learn alone — that his resemblance to
them is neither his best nor his most useful quality.
And so he finds that after all there is nothing in ideals,
and steps into a comfortable place in life ; or perhaps
he does not.
IV
The many-coloured undergraduate looks as if he
had been designed by the architect of the " Five Orders
Gate " in the Schools' Quadrangle. His hat, his face,
his tie, his waistcoat, his boots, represent the five orders ;
as in his great original, the Corinthian is predominant,
and like that, he would never be thought possible, if
he had not been seen. Yet he moves. Despite his
elaborate appearance — destined to endure perhaps for
all time, or as long as a shop-front — it is impossible to
guess what may be his activities. He may be a famous
119
Oxford
oarsman or cricketer, in which case his taste forbids
him to adopt the broad blue band of his rank, unless
there are ladies in Oxford. He may be a hard-working
student who adopts this among many methods of
showing that his successes fall to him as naturally
as Saturday and Sunday. He may be an amateur
tragedian, or magazine-wit, or aesthete, who finds the
costume less embarrassing although less distinguishing
than cosmetics and an overcoat of fur. He may be a
billiard-player who has chosen this contrasted, barry,
wavy set of colours as his coat of arms, or the per-
ambulating mannequin d' osier of several tailors, a tran-
scendental sandwich-man. Or he may be a " blood "
of many great connections and expenses ; genial in his
sphere ; pleased with the number of his debts and the
times he has been ploughed in " Smalls " ; hunting or
rowing keenly, while he lasts ; and except when he has
to work (which sends him to sleep), a sitter up at nights
over cards and wine —
Strict age and sour Severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the starry quire.
Or his great expenses and connections may not exist.
He is perhaps a poor and worthless imitation of all that
is great, — who does not know Lord X., of whom he
tells such dull stories, — whose relatives are neither
retired, nor in Army, Navy, or Church, — and entirely
respectable in the Vacations, when he earns by his own
self-sacrifice what was earned for his models by the
120
THE BATHING SHEDS, OR "PARSONS'
PLEASURE"
These sheds are built on the banks of the river
Cherwell, the willow trees lining the stream being
fitted with platforms at all heights for plunging.
A figure to the right is taking advantage of one of
these stations ; others are dressing or preparing to bathe.
The time is near sunset in summer.
V ' I i
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
unscrupulousness of their ancestors. In short, he may
be a most brilliant, most fascinating, or most modest
person, who has chosen to appear piebald.
His room is decorated with photographs of actresses,
along with perhaps a Hogarth print, a florid male and
a floral female portrait, an expensive picture of a horse,
and copies from Leighton. In a corner is a piano,
which he is perhaps eager and unable to play. The
air is scented with roses and cigarettes. The
window -seat is strewn with hunting-crops, bills, a
caricature of himself from an undergraduate paper,
several novels and boxes of cigarettes, a history of the
Argent-Bigpotts of Bigpott, and, under a cushion, some
note-books and a table of work.
He is to be met with everywhere ; for he is not
ashamed to be seen. He lives long in the memories of
travellers from Birmingham who wait five minutes in
Oxford. In the Schools he is a constant attendant,
always sanguine, not quite cheerful or satisfied with the
company, yet equal (at his Viva Voce) to a look of
inefi^ectual superiority for the man who ploughs him
with a smile. He is also to be found by the river,
during the Eights, when he cheers and looks very well ;
in a bookshop, where he recognises Omar and some
novels ; or in the High, which never wearies him,
although his bored look seems to say so.
121
Oxford
He has come up with a scholarship from school.
There, he took prizes, had an attack of brain-fever,
and edited the magazine : and he has come to the
University as if it were an upper class of his old school.
His aim is, as many prizes as possible and a good
degree. The tutors here, like the masters at school,
he regards as men who turn a handle and work up
more or less good material into scholars, as a butcher
makes sausages, all exactly alike to the eye, out of a
mysterious heap. At first he is in great awe of a
fellow, and wears his scholar's gown at its utmost
length, and as proudly as star and riband — he will
hardly take it off in the severe quarter of an hour in
which he permits himself to drink coffee and eat
anchovy toast after dinner ; and he sometimes pretends
to forget that he has it on until he goes to bed.
Perhaps on one occasion he trips his tutor over a
quotation or something of no account. He scans the
tutor's bookshelves, and finds odd things between
Tacitus and Thucydides which make him ponder. At
length, he is less respectful ; opens discussions, in
which, having tired the tutor, he returns very well
satisfied. For he has a patent memory, as he has a
patent reading-lamp and reading-desk. Nothing goes
into it without a bright label, as nothing goes into his
note-book without honours of pencilled red and blue.
His copy of Homer is so overscored that one might
122
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
suppose that the battle of the pigmies and cranes had
been fought to a sanguinary end upon its page.
At school his football was treated with contempt,
yet with silence, except by very small boys. At college
he is anxious to do a little at games. The captain of
the boats asks him, as a matter of course, to go down
to the river, to be tubbed (or coached) in a pair-oar
boat ; and he replies that he " will willingly spare half
an hour." He shows some good points at the river ;
is painstaking and neat. His half-hour is mercilessly
multiplied day after day. He is to be found at the
starting-point in February, in his college Torpid, and
proves a stately nonentity or passenger ; discovers that
rowing abrades more than his skin, and gives it up just
before he is asked to. For the future he sculls alone,
once a week, when it is mild, and oftener when his
friends are visiting him — which he does not encourage.
At such times he learns that it is quite true that Oxford
possesses some fine drawings, marbles, stained glass,
and a library of little use to a determined " Greats "
man. These he exhibits to the visitors impatiently
and with pride. He returns to his work unruffled.
Already he has scored one First Class and a proxime for
a prize. Yet his tutor pays him qualified compliments,
which he attributes to the natural bitterness of a second
class man. The tutor sometimes asks him what he reads ;
to which he replies brightly with a long list of texts, etc.
" Yes, but what do you read when you unbend ^ "
says the tutor. " Did you ever read Midshipman
Easy ? " (with a touch of exasperation).
123
Oxford
The youth blushingly replies : " No, I never
unbend."
Nor is the other far more pleased when he brings
with him, on a short vacation boating holiday, a volume
of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Now and then he speaks at the Union, There and
at afternoon teas with ladies he is known for the lucidity
of his commonplaces and the length of his quotations.
For the most part he talks only of his work and the
current number of the Times. His work, mean-
time, is less and less satisfactory to every one but his
coach. Some say that he will get another first, and will
not deserve it. Already he is learning that three or
four years among '* boys " is not helpful to his future.
No one so much as he emphasises the distinction
between third and second year undergraduates. He is
always looking for really improving conversation, and
play of mind without any play. A book tea would
please him, if it were not so frivolous.
Once only he lapses from the rigidity of his ways.
He thinks it a matter of duty until it occurs, when the
hearty and informal reception given to his rendering of
" To Anthea " discourages any further condescension.
With that exception, he moves with considerable dignity
among mankind : in all things discreet, with a leaning
towards the absurd ; in most things well under control,
yet, in spite of his rigidity, really luxuriating in the
sweets of a neutral nature that never tempts temptation.
He sends in a neat, flowery, and icy poem for the
Newdigate Prize, and wins. He gets his second First
124
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
Class and an appointment which he likes at the same
time. He enters for a fellowship, and his failure calls
forth the old story about the cherry tart that was
offered to likely competitors at a fellowship examina-
tion, where the cleanest management of the stones
meant success.
He goes down with his degree, and confident,
applauded, unmissed. His friends say that he lacks
something which he ought to have. What is it ?
VI
He has come up to Oxford with an unconquerable
love of men and books and games ; is resolved not to
be careful in small matters for a few years ; and has a
clear vision of a profession ahead. Others think that
a fellowship and a prize are his due ; he vaguely regards
them as nice. But he has a strong belief that any kind
of distinction is dangerous at Oxford, and among the
least of its possibilities. He respects the scholar and
the Blue, and sees that they might equally well be made
in another city or on another stream. Bent upon a
life among men, he sees that a university is a place
where many are men, but where many of the suspicious
and calculating passions of a bigger world are in abey-
ance ; and thinks that it should therefore be the home
of perfect rivalries and friendships.
He will attend the lectures of , which are out-
side his course. He will accept some hearty excesses
in the rooms of as equally important. When he
125
Oxford
comes up his sympathies are universal. He is eager
and warm in his liking of men and things ; and he is
straightway on happy terms with undergraduates and
dons. After a few terms his versatility is hard-worked
in order to give something more than an appearance of
sympathy in the company of athletes, reading men,
contemplative men, and wealthy men. For a time his
success is sublime. The reading man thinks there was
never such a student. The rowing man approves of
his leg-work and his narratives at those little training
parties for the enjoyment of music, port, and fruit —
" togger ports." His method appeals to the don.
Now and then, indeed, some one a little more reticent
than himself puts him to a test, and he may discourse
on Aquinas to a Unitarian Socialist, or on Gargantua to
one deep in Christian mysticism or fresh from the new
year's advice of his great-aunt. In such cases, either he
is repulsed with sufficient narrowness on the part of
the other to supply a necessary balm, or he makes a
surprised and admiring convert, who may do odd things
on account of his inferior versatility. For quite a long
time he may have the good fortune to let loose his
interest in the Ptolemies in the neighbourhood of other
admirers or neutral gentlemen. And so long all is
more than well. He is popular, exuberant, and in a
fair way of growth, albeit a little overdone. It is true
that in tired moments he is likely to choose the path of
least resistance and find himself in not very versatile
company. But what a life he leads ! what afternoons
on the Cherwell between Marston and Islip in the
126
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
summer ; and beyond Fyfield, when autumn still has
all that is a perfecting of summer in its gift ! The
admiring plodder who hears his speeches says that he
will some day be Lord Chancellor. His verses have
something beyond cleverness in them : they have a
high impulsion, as when spring makes a crown imperial
or a tulip. And listening to his talk or reading his
letters, one might think that he will be content to be
one of those men of genius who avoid fame — but if
their letters are unearthed two hundred years hence
they will have the life of Wotton's or T. E. Brown's.
His friends think that such a clear-souled, gracious,
brilliant creature would leaven the Senior Common
Room and draw out the shyness of , and twist the
neck of 's exuberant dulness.
The liberal life, close in friendship with so many of
the living and the historical, on occasions almost gives
him the freedom of all time. His friends note that
Catullus or Lucan or Dante is nearer to him than to
other men. He quotes them as if he had lived with
them and were their executor, and by his sympathy
seems to have won a part authorship of their finest
things. He expounds the law and makes it as ex-
hilarating as the Arabian Nights^ or as if it were a
sequel to Don Quixote. And in history the dons notice
his picturesqueness, which is as passionate as if he could
have written that ardent sonnet : —
The kings come riding back from the Crusade,
The purple kings, and all their mounted men ;
They fill the street with clamorous cavalcade ;
The kings have broken down the Saracen.
127
Oxford
Singing a great song of the Eastern wars.
In crimson ships across the sea they came.
With crimson sails and diamonded dark oars,
That made the Mediterranean flash with flame.
And reading how, in that far month, the ranks
Formed on the edge of the desert, armoured all,
I wish to God that I had been with them
When the first Norman leapt upon the wall.
And Godfrey led the foremost of the Franks,
And young Lord Raymond stormed Jerusalem.
So the glories of youth and history and summer mingle
in his brain and speech.
No one is so married to his surroundings as he, and
while he appears to many to be shaped by them —
beautiful or grotesque — as an animal in a shell ; to a
few he appears also to shape them, so that Oxford in
his company is a new thing, as if it were the highest,
last creation of the modern mind. He does not ac-
quiesce in the limp mediaevalism of the rest, but
recreates the Middle Ages for himself, finding new
humanities in the sculptures, and beauties in the per-
spective, strange sympathies between the monkish work.
and the voices and faces of those who sit amidst it. In
his own college he effects a surprising " modernisation "
by removing a little eighteenth-century work and re-
vealing the fifteenth-century original. Thus all history
is to him a vivid personal experience.
But he is overwhelmed by his versatility, and cultivates
that for its own sake, and at last loses his sympathy
with all who are not as he. The athletes begin to treat
him as a poser. The hard workers stand aloof from
his extravagances. With different sets he is treated
128
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
and rejected as a man of the world, a hepatetic philo-
sopher, a dilettante ; . . . some speak of the literary
taint ; the dons are tired. He is in danger of becoming
the hero of the most unstable freshman and his scout.
And so, though he has perhaps but one failing more
than his contemporaries, and certainly more virtues, he
is ridiculed or feared or despised, and goes about like
Leonolo in the play, who wandered
Because perhaps among the crowd
I shall find some to whom I may relate
That story of the children and the meat —
until he has the good luck to fall back upon his friends.
There he is safe again. His name will indeed be
handed down through half a dozen undergraduate
generations for his least characteristic adventures, but
if that is a rare distinction, and equivalent to a press
immortality, it is likely to be of no profit to him.
Where he used to be an expensive copy of a Bohemian,
he becomes at last as near the genuine thing as any
critic, with a wholesome fear of being absolute, would
care to pronounce. His one pose is that of the plain-
spoken, natural man, in the presence of a snob. Every-
where he is as independent as a parrot or a tramp. In
life, few are to be envied so much. For he achieves
everything but success.
VII
The important undergraduate is one who has been
thunderstruck by the inferiority of the rest. He can-
129 9
Oxford
not, if he would, be rid of the notion. In a large
college the distinction between himself and others is
cheerfully acknowledged by them, while he leads a
painful life. In a small college, for a year or two, he
is so handled that he may sometimes wish he were as
other men are. At the end of that time he has by
contagion created a covey of important men, and now,
to his moral, athletic, and intellectual excellence, and
his superior school, is added the excellence of being
several years older than the majority. He establishes
a despotism for the good of the college. He is willing
to take the fellows into partnership, makes advances,
and, when coyly repulsed, has his sense of importance
increased by the knowledge that an opposition exists.
His splendour is marred only by the stranger, who
mistakes his brass-buttoned blazer for a livery, and
finds his pomposity well worthy of such fine old
quadrangles, — and requests him with a smile and half
a sovereign to exhibit the chapel and the hall, and " tell
me who are the swells " !
He walks about Oxford with a beautiful satisfaction.
" A poor thing, but my own," he seems to say, as he
enters the college gate. Little boys in the street pull
off their caps as he passes, and the saucy, imprudent
freshman does the same. He rows, he plays football
and cricket, he debates, all indifferently, but with such
an air that he and even some others for a time believe
that he is the life and soul of the college.
He has been captain and president of everything,
when he finds that there is no further honour open to
130
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
him, and he muses almost with melancholy. The
others find it out somewhat later ; he is dejected.
Though fallen, he is still majestic. He stalks about
like a foxhound in July, or like a rebellious archangel —
Is this the region, this the soil, the clime? . . .
Once more October returns. A new generation of
freshmen is invited to tea, and for one glorious hour
his old vivacity returns, as he questions, instructs, ex-
horts. " The President of the O.U.B.C. once said to
me, . . . " or " When I was in the college boat and we
made seven bumps . . ." — such are his conjuring terms.
Perhaps in a few years he returns, to find that the
college is not what it was, and that his nickname is
still remembered.
VIII
He is one whom the Important Undergraduate regards
as a parody of himself. For he resembles the other in
no respect. He is a clean, brave, and modest freshman,
with too great a liking for the same qualities in others
to be disturbed by any faulty affectations that may go
along with them. When he comes up he has a few
friends in Oxford, keeps them, and is well contented.
He plays his games heartily, and is almost as glad to
cheer, when he is not good enough or pushing enough
to play. Nothing can destroy his regular habits, and at
first he narrowly escapes being despised for them by his
inferiors. He is comparatively poor and not very clever.
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Oxford
Neither has he any amusing oddities, or stories to tell,
or much whisky to dispense. Yet he finds notoriety
thrust upon him. If it were not for his firm and blushing
manner, he would never have his room empty for work.
Very soon, he is the only man in the college who may
sport his oak with no fear from the thunders of distant
and idle acquaintances. Every one wishes to possess
him. The athletes cannot withstand his running, his
hard fielding. The more unpopular reading-men are
first attracted by his simple habits as a freshman, and
then surprised that they are not repulsed when they
hear that he will get his Blue ; he is always their protector.
The elegant and stupid men, at least for a few terms,
know no man who so becomes a cigar, and is so fit to meet
their female cousins at breakfast. The brilliant men like
him first because he is a mystery ; next, because he
recalls to them their "lost youth," which was nothing like
his ; and finally, because he is so friendly and so naively
rebukes their most venturesome sallies. His presence
in a room is more than a wood fire and a steaming bowl.
He seems to know not sorrow —
Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot.
It is sorrow-killing to see his amazement at sorrow,
like the amazement of those spirits in Purgatory who
exclaimed, as Dante passed : " The light seems not to
shine on one side of him, though he behaves as one that
lives." Men of very different persuasions are fascinated
by " the young Greek " in the Parks or on the river.
He is successful everywhere, and is in time captain of
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Undergraduates of the Present and Past
football and president of the debating and literary
society, although his knowledge of literature is confined
to Scott's Novels, Hypatia^ and the Idylls of the
King. He accepts the advice of the Important Under-
graduate, here and elsewhere, and unconsciously ignores
it, with happy results. For his contemporaries believe
that he has launched his college upon one of those
sudden, mysterious ascensions that mean social, learned,
and athletic improvement at once. To the last he is
diffident, and at the same time always capable of doing
his best. " Can you clear that brook ? " one asks in
the Hinksey fields. " I don't know," is the reply, and
over he goes, a foot clear amongst the orchis. Not a
great deal more powerful than the cox, he strokes a
boat that has never been bumped, and is the only oar
whom the rest all praise. To see him halting over a
commonplace speech at a college function, or making
the most ludicrous new verses to the alphabetical song
of" Jolly old Dons," and winning applause ; or dropping
his head on his knees at the winning-post on the river ;
or carried for the hundredth time round the quadrangle
on some festive night — is, nobody knows or asks why,
an inspiration. And after his last farewell dinner he
smiles, as if he knew everything or had the pitie supreme,
as he notices the follies which he supposes he is " not
clever enough for," and goes down to his manor or
country curacy very happily.
133
Oxford
IX
There was for a short time, amidst but not of the
University, a student whom I cannot but count as a
" clerk of Oxenford." He came from no school, but
straight from a counting-house. All his life he had
been a deep, unguided delver in the past. An orphan
in the world, he had chosen his family among the noble
persons of antiquity. Cassar was more real to him
than Napoleon, and Cato more influential than any
millionaire. He had tasted all the types, from Diogenes
to Seneca and LucuUus. When he tired of his counting-
house, he tried to imagine a resemblance between it and
a city state, but was himself but a helot in the end.
So it happened that he came to live in a cottage attic,
five or six miles from Oxford. He wanted to be a
university man. He despised scholarships as if they
had been the badge of the Legion of Honour. Colleges
he would have nothing to do with, because they spoiled
the simplicity of the idea of a university in his mind.
They had made possible the social folly of Oxford.
But in his reading of history he had travelled no
farther than the Middle Ages towards his own time ;
and a picture of Oxford life in that day fascinated him.
He believed that it was still possible to lead the unstable,
independent, penniless life of a scholar ; and he knew
not why a student should hope or wish to be anything
like a merchant or a prince. A merchant had money,
and a prince flattery : he would have wisdom. It was
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Undergraduates of the Present and Past
likely to be a long search, and in his view it was the
search that was beyond price. He wanted wisdom as
a man might want a star, because it was a rare and
beautiful thing. So his studies were a spiritual ex-
perience. The short passages of Homer which he
knew by heart had something of rehgious unction in
his utterance.
He left London afoot, with a parcel of books
strapped to his shoulders ; his only disappointment
coming from a landlord who refused to pay for his
singing with a meal, as he would have done six hundred
years ago. A farmer treated him generously, under
the belief that he was mad.
A few antiquated Greek texts and notes, an odd
volume of Chronicles from the Rolls Series, and an
Aldrich, adorned his room, and with their help he
hoped to lay the foundations of a seraphic, universal
wisdom. Gradually he would become worthy to use
the Bodleian and contend with the learned gown and
hostile town.
Once a week, in the beginning, he walked into
Oxford. He saw the river covered with boats, and
laughed happily and pitifully at men who seemed to
know nothing about the uses of a university. A good-
tempered youth, in rowing knickerbockers, was a fit
disciple for his revelations, he thought, and was about
to preach, when he barely escaped from a bicycle and a
megaphone. Almost sad, murmuring Abelard's line —
Sunt muhi fratres sed in illis rarus amicus —
'3S
Oxford
he hastened to the city. The spires gave him courage
again, and he ran, singing an old song : —
When that I was a scholar bold,
And in my head was wealth untold :
Heigh ! Ho ! in the days of old
In Oxford town a scholar trolled.
Every one in a master's gown received a bow. He
was mistaken for a literary man. And once in Oxford,
he went, seriously and as if at a ceremony, through a
minutely prepared plan. He attended service at one
of the churches, and especially St. Mary's. He took
long, repeated walks up and down High Street, and
into all the lanes, which he hardly knew when their
names had been changed. Then he sat for an hour in
the oldest-looking inn. In blessed mood, he tried the
landlord unsuccessfully with Latin, and waited until
some scholar should call and exchange jests with him
in the learned tongue, or perhaps join him in a quarrel
with the town. The only scholar that called talked in
a strange tongue, chiefly to a bull-pup, and never to
him. And late at night he stole reluctantly home,
never so much pleased as when, in a dark alley, he was
saluted by a proctor, and asked if he might be a member
of the University. But the little note inviting him to
be at — College at a.m. on the following day
never came, and he was cheated of the glory of being
the first member of the University who could by no
means pay a fine.
At the end of this holy day he spent the night with
his books, thinking it shame to sleep away the ardent,
136
INTERIOR OF THE HALL, MAGDALEN
COLLEGE
At the east end of the Hall, facing the spectator, is
the (laVs and high table, lighted from the north by an
oriel window looking into the Cloister Court (see
picture of Cloisters).
Portraits of College dignitaries adorn the walls above
the dado.
The long tables and seats in the foreground are
used by the undergraduates.
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
memoried hours that followed. When sleep caught
him at last, with what happiness and pomp he walked
down St. Aldate's and along Blue Boar Street and
Merton Street, and came suddenly upon Wren's domed
gate at Queen's ! or paused in St. Mary's porches, or
found the inmost green sanctuary of Wadham Gardens !
Once he dreamed that on a Sunday he preached
from the little outdoor pulpit at Magdalen, where he
mounted by some artifice of sleep's. The chamber
windows and quadrangles were full. His voice rose
and linked to him the crowd outside in High Street,
All remained silent, even when it was known that the
hieroglyphics were skipping from their perches in the
cloister and carrying off large numbers, no one knew
whither. Those that were spared — and his voice rose
ever higher, and expanded like the column and fans
of masonry at Christ Church — were stripped of their
waistcoats and ties and all their luxuries and dignities.
Their hair was shaved : presently they were all cowled,
and with a great shout hailed him Chancellor. He
floated down from the pulpit and led them down the
High, evicting the pampered tradespeople and fettering
all parasites. Singing a charging hymn, they marched
in procession to St. Mary's, and thence to a feast at
Christ Church hall ; when he awoke with the din of
revelry.
Sometimes, in his dreams, he saw enacted the Greek
tragedies, to the accompaniment of the organs of New
College and the Cathedral.
Now that he knew his plays by heart, he came oftener
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Oxford
to Oxford, and gained the freedom of the Bodleian.
Every day he came, bringing his own books to fill the
interval before the library books arrived, although for
the most part he stared at the gilt inscriptions outside
his alcove window, or at the trees and roofs farther off.
When he was hidden among the expected volumes he
read but feverishly. He put questions to himself in
the style of the schoolmen, and pondered " whether
the music of the spheres be verse or prose." He tingled
all over with the learned air, and was intoxicated by the
dust of a little-used book. The brown spray that fell
from a volume on the shelf before him was sweeter
than the south wind. Week after week obscured his
aims. The only moments of his old chanting joy
came to him in his still undiluted expectations, when
he came in sight of the city —
O fortunati quorum jam mcenia surgunt ! —
and at night, while the river shone like an infinite
train let fall from the shoulders of the city.
He sold his books in Little Clarendon Street, and
whenever he wished to read, there he found them and
others ready. Most of his time passed in the corner
of an inn, where he sat at a hole in the dark window
as at a hagioscope, and with heavy eyelids watched the
University men. And it was possible to earn a living
by selling the Star for a penny, night after night,
and to have the felicity of dying in Oxford.
138
A "STUDY" IN THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY
The window in the "study" looks south into the
Fellows' Garden of Exeter College. To the right,
outside the picture, is the main aisle of the Library,
shown in another drawing, and to the extreme left is
a glimpse of the cross aisle leading to the staircase
entrance to the Library, the columns supporting the
galleries, and the ancient timbered roof.
Beneath the coloured bust of Sir Thomas Sackville,
and on the screen forming one side of the " study,"
are placed rare portraits of distinguished persons, and
" drawings " by old masters, etc.
In the showcase fixed over the specimen-drawers
are books, relics, autographs, etc., and objects of great
value and antiquity.
AmiiiiSmiiSHmm
Undergraduates of the Present and Past
The Past
I
Whilonie ther was dwellynge at Oxenford
A riche gnof, that gestes hceld to bord,
And of his craft he was a carpenter.
With hym ther was dwellynge a poure scoler,
Hadde lerned art, but al his fantasye
Was turned for to lern astrologye.
And koude a certeyn of conclusions,
To demen by interrogaciouns,
If that men sholde have droghte or elles shoures.
Or if men asked him what sholde bifalle
Of everythyng, I may nat rekene hem alle.
This clerk was cleped hende Nicholas.
Of deerne love he koude, and of solas,
And ther-to he was sleigh and full privee.
And lyk a mayden mekd for to see.
A chambre hadde he in that hostelrye
Allone withouten any compaignye.
And fetisly y-dight, with herbes swoote.
And he himself as sweete as is the roote
Of lycorys, or any cetewale.
His Almageste, and bookds grete and small.
His astrelabie, longynge for his art.
His augrym stones, layen faire apart.
On shelves couched at his beddes heed.
His presse y-covered with a faldyng reed.
And all above there lay a gay sautrie.
On which he made a-nyghtes melodic
So swetely, that al the chambre rong.
And Angelas ad Virginem^ he song ;
And after that he song the " Kynges noote " ;
Ful often blessed was his myrie throte.
And thus this sweete clerk his tyme spente
After his freendes fyndyng and his rente.
Such was a " clerk of Oxenford " in Chaucer's day,
living probably on the generosity of a patron, and
differing only from his patron's son, inasmuch as he
139
Oxford
was saved the expense of a fur hood. In the rooms of
most, Bibles, Missals, or an Aristotle or Boethius, took
the place of the Almagest of the astrologer ; and more
conspicuous were the rosaries, lutes, bows and arrows
of the undergraduates. In their boisterous parti-
coloured life of almost liberty, even an examination was
a vivid thing, and meant a disputation against all
comers in a public school, to be followed by a feast of
celebration, visits to taverns, and probably a dance.
After the scole of Oxenforde tho ;
and so, after a fight with saucy tradesmen or foreigners,
to bed, or Binsey for a hare, or to other night work.
II
" A meere young Gentleman of the Universitie is
one that comes there to weare a gowne, and to say
hereafter, he has been at the Universitie. His Father
sent him thither, because hee heard there were the best
Fencing and Dancing Schools. From these he has his
Education, from his Tutor the oversight. The first
element of his knowledge is to be shewne the Colleges,
and initiated in a Taverne by the way, which hereafter
hee will learne for himselfe. The two marks of his
Senioritie, is the bare velvet of his gowne, and his
proficiencie at Tennis, where when he can once play
a Set, he is a Freshman no more. His Studie has
commonly handsome shelves, his Bookes neate silk
strings, which he shows to his Father's man, and is loth
to untye or take downe for feare of misplacing. Upon
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Undergraduates of the Present and Past
foule days for recreation hee retyres thither, and looks
over the prety booke his Tutor reades to him, which
is commonly some short Historie, or a piece of
Euphormio ; for which his Tutor gives him Money to
spend next day. His maine loytering is at the Library,
where hee studies Armes and bookes of Honour, and
turnes a Gentleman Critick in Pedigrees. Of all
things hee endures not to be mistaken for a Scholler,
and hates a black suit though it be of Satin. His
companion is ordinarily some stale fellow, that has been
notorious for an Ingle to gold hatbands, whom hee
admires at first, afterward scornes. If hee have spirit
or wit, he may light of better company, and may learne
some flashes of wit, which may doe him Knight's
service in the Country hereafter. But he is now gone
to the Inns of Court, where he studies to forget what
hee learn'd before, his acquaintance and the fashion."
From the Microcosmographie.
Ill
The younger Richard Graves (171 5-1 804), a con-
temporary of Shenstone and Whitfield at Pembroke,
has sketched, in his own person, the unstable under-
graduate of sixteen, in his progress from set to set. It
is a very lasting type. " Having brought with me,"
he writes, " the character of a tolerably good Grecian,
I was invited to a very sober little party, who amused
themselves in the evening with reading Greek and
drinking water. Here I continued six months, and
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Oxford
we read over Theophrastus, Epictetus, Phalaris' Et>istles^
and such other Greek authors as are seldom read at
schooh But I was at length seduced from this
mortified symposium to a very different party, a set
of jolly, sprightly young fellows, most of them west-
country lads, who drank ale, smoked tobacco, punned,
and sang bacchanalian catches the whole evening. I
began to think them the only wise men. Some gentle-
men commoners, however, who considered the above-
mentioned very low company (chiefly on account of
the liquor they drank), good-naturedly invited me to
their party ; they treated me with port wine and arrack
punch ; and now and then, when they had drunk so
much as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they
would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They
kept late hours, drank their favourite toasts on their
knees, and in short were what were then called ' bucks
of the first head.' "
IV
The Lownger
I rise about nine, get to Breakfast by ten,
Blow a Tune on my Flute, or perhaps make a Pen ;
Read a Play till eleven, or cock my lac'd Hat ;
Then step to my Neighbour's, till Dinner to chat.
Dinner over, to Torn^s or to James's I go,
The News of the Town so impatient to know :
While Law^ Locke and Newton, and all the rum Race
That talk of their Modes, their Ellipses, and Space,
The Seat of the Soul, and new Systems on high,
In Holes, as abstruse as their Mysteries lye.
From the Coffee-house then I to Tennis away.
And at five I post back to my College to pray :
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Undergraduates of the Present and Past
I sup before eight, and secure from all Duns,
Undauntedly march to the Mitre, or Tuns ;
Where in Punch or good Claret my Sorrows I drown,
And toss ofF a Bowl to the best in the Town :
At one in the Morning, I call what's to pay.
Then Home to my College I stagger away.
Thus I tope all the Night, as I trifle all Day.
From the Oxford Sausage.
V
I have taken from Glanvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing
the original version of the story of Matthew Arnold's
Scholar Gypsy.
" There was very lately a lad in the University of
Oxford, who being of very pregnant and ready parts,
and yet wanting the encouragement of preferment, was
by his poverty forc'd to leave his studies there, and to
cast himself upon the wide world for a livelyhood.
Now, his necessities growing dayly on him, and wanting
the help of friends to relieve him, he was at last forced
to join himself to a company of Vagabond Gypsies,
whom occasionally he met with, and to follow their
Trade for a maintenance. Among these extravagant
people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he
quickly got so much of their love and esteem ; as that
they discovered to him their Mystery : in the practice
of which, by the pregnancy of his wit and parts he soon
grew so good and proficient, as to be able to outdo his
Instructors, After he had been a pretty while well
exercised in the Trade ; there chanc'd to ride by a
couple of Scholars who had formerly bin of his acquaint-
143
Oxford
ance. The Scholars had quickly spyed out their old
friend among the Gypsies ; and their amazement to see
him among such society, had well nigh discovered him ;
but by a sign he prevented their owning him before
that crew, and taking one of them aside privately,
desired him with a friend to go to an Inn, not far
distant thence, promising there to come to them.
They accordingly went thither, and he follows : after
their first salutations, his friends enquire how he came
to lead so odd a life as that was, and to joyn himself
with such a cheating, beggarly company. The Scholar
Gypsy having given them an account of the necessity,
which drove him to that kind of life ; told them, that
the people he went with were not such Imposters as
they were taken for, but that they had a traditional
kind of learning among them, and could do wonders
by the power of Imagination, and that himself had
learnt much of their Art, and improved it further than
themselves could. And to evince the truth of what he
told them, he said he'd remove into another room,
leaving them to discourse together ; and upon his
return tell them the sum of what they had talked of
Which accordingly he performed, giving them a full
account of what had pass'd between them in his absence.
The Scholars being amazed at so unexpected a discovery,
earnestly desired him to unriddle the mystery. In which
he gave them satisfaction, by telling them, that what
he did was by the power of Imagination, his Phancy
binding theirs ; and that himself had dictated to them
the discourse, they held together, while he was from
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Undergraduates of the Present and Past
them : That there were warrantable wayes of heighten-
ing the Imagination to that pitch, as to bind another's ;
and that when he had compass'd the whole secret, some
parts of which he said he was yet ignorant of, he
intended to leave their company, and give the world an
account of what he had learned."
145
COLLEGE SERVANTS
OF THE PRESENT AND THE PAST
CHAPTER V
college servants of the present and the past
The Present
The fact that no porter or other college servant has
recently received a D.C.L. is no proof of his insignifi-
cance. " The President and your humble servant manage
very well between us," said one porter, with perfect
truth. College servants are the corbels and gargoyles
that complete the picturesqueness and usefulness of
Oxford. The oldest are not so much serviceable as
quaint, often grotesque, reminders of an age that has
gone ; their faces are apt to express grim judgments
upon the changes which they have helplessly watched ;
and they are among the stoutest retainers of the past.
The younger are either very much like any other good
men-servants, silent, receptive, curious but uninquiring,
expensive, and better able to instruct than to learn ; or
they are average men, with Oxford variations. In spite
of their profound knowledge of the richer classes, they
remain, as a body, good conservatives, with the half-
sarcastic, half-reverent servility of their order. They
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Oxford
do not often change ; the men whom they serve are
replaced every year by others ; and looking on at
generation after generation, they are not only skilled
and practical psychologists, and almost the only persons
in Oxford who wear silk hats on Sunday, but perhaps
the most enduring human element in the University.
" Well," says an eighteenth-century " scout " to another
to-day, in an undergraduate "dialogue of the dead"
— " Well, I suppose gentlemen are no worse and
servants no better than in my time ? " " Such a
thing is impossible " was the reply. Yet one may
surmise that they are more plutocratic, at least,
than they were, if it be true that every summer at a
Scottish hotel one may find " Mr. and Mrs. Brown of
College, Oxford " on the pages of the visitors'
book, in a handwriting known to the buttery. In the
game which they play with the undergraduates, they
know all their opponents' cards. Yet, until a member
of the University is admitted to the cellar and pantry
parliament, they will always be praised as reticent and
discreet. A little inexperience will soon reveal, as the
freshman knows, the other qualities of the college
servant.
I
He awakens you every morning by playing with
your bath, and is a perpetually recurring background to
the sweet disquiet of your last half-hour in bed. In
serving you, he serves himself ; and late in the day he
150
College Servants of the Present and Past
is to be seen with a wallet on his back, bent under such
" learning's crumbs " as half-empty wine-bottles and
jars of Cooper's marmalade. In these matters he has a
neat running hand, without flourishes. No man has the
air of being so much as he the right hand of fate.
When he drinks your wine and disappoints a joyous
company, when he assumes your best cigars, and leaves
only those which were provided for the freshman of
taste — so inevitable are his ways that you can only hope
sarcastically that he liked the fare. He appears to have
a noble scorn of cash, when he asks for it ; and you are
bound to imitate. All the wisdom of the wise is cheap
compared with his manner of beginning a speech with,
" If you please, sir, it is usual for freshmen to, ..."
while he is dusting your photographs. He is blessed
with an incapacity to blush. His politics are those of
the majority ; his religion has something in common
with that of all men. He could be conscientiously
recommended for a post in a temple niche or a street
corner, with the inscription " For twenty years a mate
at sea, and blinded in the pursuit of my duties," or
" Crippled in childhood." He is equalled only by his
" boy," who is perhaps older than himself. I remember
one such. I should like to have known his tailor, who
must have had a genius for style, for fitting aptest
clothes for men. His coat was as many-pocketed as
Panurge's, and as wonderful. Its bulges and creases
were an epitome of ; its " hang " might serve as
the one true epitaph, if suspended over his tomb. With
all his faults, he had that toleration which the vicious
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Oxford
often extend to the good, but do not often receive in
return. He was a fellow of infinite wiles that were
wasted but not thrown away in a world of three or four
quadrangles and a buttery. Full of traditions, he was
their master, not their prey ; and though he was the
shadow of great names, he seemed conscious of being
their inheritor too. For he had served men who had
got fellowships and even Rugby or rowing Blues.
With leading cases out of this mighty past he defended
his misdemeanours and supported his proposals. In
vain he toiled after time ; he was always a generation
behind. If a man failed in "Smalls" or Divinity, he
was told that Mr. , the '* Varsity three-quarter,"
did no less, and Mr. , who rowed at Henley and
was sent down after a bonfire, was ploughed four
times. " Lightly like a flower " he wore his honours,
tyrannising over men who never got Blues and were
never sent down, and smiling away awe and ridicule
alike. " I never saw nor shall see such men as Pirithous,
. . ."he might have said ; it mattered little to him ;
and even Pirithous was only respected after many years,
when he had become an investment of the " boy's."
He quoted wise saws, was full of advice, offered with a
kind of humility and yet indifference, because you were
so small a factor in his self-satisfaction.
High on your summit, Wisdom's mimick'd Air
Sits thron'd, with Pedantry her solemn sire.
In every glance and motion you display,
Sage Ignorance her gloom scholastic throws
And stamps o'er all your visage, once so gay,
Unmeaning Gravity's serene repose.
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College Servants of the Present and Past
And so he goes through life, with all the pomp of
learning — of the reality, none — complacent, imposing,
and yet hardly a man.
II
Of the college cook it is easy to say too much. He
is a potentate against whom there is no appeal on earth.
" Much knavery," says Ben Jonson, " may be vented
in a pudding." In the days of the Shotover Papers
he could offer in exchange for a recipe " an introduction
to some country families." At the monastic door of
his kitchen, as he meditates his mysteries, something of
the Middle Ages clings to him yet, and he is half an
abbot, contemptuous of a generation that makes small
demand upon his subtlety and wealth. It is said that
he comes of brilliant ancestry and has fallen. What
heights there may be in the world from which a man
could be said to fall in becoming a college cook, I do
not know. For years he made clear the distinction
between fancy and imagination. By fancy he lived, and
on his fancies generations fed. He could disguise the
meanest materials, and make them illustrious, subtle, or
exquisitely sweet. He was animal propter convivia
natum. In his grey kitchen, with chestnut beams aloft,
a visitor seemed to assist at the inauguration of a
perpetual spring. On the one hand was the earth — the
raw material — the mere flesh or fish ; and out of this,
with upturned sleeves, like artist or conjuror, he made
the flowers flourish and the leaves abound. By the
perfume, it was a mysterious indoor Mayday. And so
Oxford
he lived, and was feared and respected. But it was
admitted that he had rivals. Something in a grander
style was yet to be done. . . .
It was mid-February. Wherever I looked, I saw
first the cold white sky above and the snow beneath,
and secondly the red faces of skaters out of doors, and
indoors the blaze of great fires and the purple and gold
of wine. Winter was to be met in every street — white-
haired, it is true, but nevertheless a lusty, red-faced
fellow, redder than autumn, with a grip of the hands
and a roaring voice. As I passed the kitchen, the cook
was silently at work. His hair was like the snow, his
face like the fire. The brass, steel, pewter, and silver
shone. The kitchen, with its fragrance, lustre, and
quietness, was like an altar. There, too, was the priest,
with stainless vestment and sacerdotal bearing. And as
I left him and mounted the stairs, I seemed unblest. I
found Scott tedious, Pater excessive, and Sir Thomas
Browne a trifler, and threw them aside. Soon there
was a knock at the door, and a man — a throne, domina-
tion, princedom, virtue, power — swept magnificently in.
A light and a warmth, beyond the power of fire to
bestow, accompanied him. He bent down solemnly and
laid a little white covered plate upon the hearth. Before
I could speak — "the gods themselves are hard to
recognise " — he was gone. I uncovered the plate with
something of my visitant's solemnity —
Fair spirit of ethereal birth,
In whom such mysteries and beauties blend !
Still from thine ancient dwelling-place descend,
And idealise our too material earth ;
College Servants of the Present and Past
Still to the Bard thy chaste conceptions lend,
To him thine early purity renew ;
Round every image, grace majestic throw ;
Till rapturously the living song shall glow
With inspiration as thy being true,
And Poesy's creations, decked by thee.
Shall wake the tuneful thrill of sensuous ecstasy.
It was the climacteric of his career, and he shall go
down to posterity upon the palates of men, not as one
who worked out his recipes to three places of decimals,
or as a distinguished maker of " bishop " or " posset,"
or as one worth his weight in oysters, but as the creator
of that necessary which is in fact brown bread, toasted
and buttered.
Ill
Most pontifical of all college servants was old
Acamas, who was not long ago to be seen, in his
retirement, apparently beating the city bounds, and
now and then standing sentry and defender of some
old gate or archway. I first noticed him in the chapel
quadrangle of , and could almost have mistaken
him for a fellow of the old school, such was his aspect,
and the reverent, half-wondering air with which he
surveyed the buildings. But he took off his hat to the
junior fellow, and I was undeceived. There was some-
thing pathetic in that salute. He was himself apparently
far worthier than the young man in flannels of the
chapel and the ancient arms ; and he seemed to know
it, as he bent and trembled over his stick to declaim : —
" He may be a very clever young gentleman, but,
^S5
Oxford
bless me, it is not the Greek that makes the scholar.
There was the old President, who never looked at his
book, and was all for horses ; — but he had a way with
him ; he would swear just so, so ; he was a scholar, if
ever a man was. But the new ones are just all book or
all play. They came in about the same time as bicycles
and steam ploughs and such nonsense. And there's too
much lady about the college now ; and such ladies !
they are so dressed that it is hard to tell which of them
is quite respectable. . . ."
And so he went on, a little less reverent than he
looked. But it was only a crimson heat of old age, and
soon passed.
What a fine, decent figure he was. He was clothed
in a dull black suit, with black tie, and an old-shaped
hat, and wore his gloves. He had unquestionably a
professional mien, and could not have been a gardener
or groom. He was something old, settled in the land
and known to the stars, traditional. His sorrow was
nothing less dignified than disestablishment. It was
time to be going. The enemy was in possession and
insulting. He had been in the Balliol fellows' garden
ages ago, and knew what a line the old buildings made
against the sky, and what the scene is now. He would
walk about, hoping to express a volley of scorn by his
silence to persons with no ear for silence. He never
went into Tom quad at Christ Church without missing
the figure of Mercury — perhaps a copy from John of
Bologna, and taken down early last century — which
used to preside over the fountain, still known as
.56
THE TOM QUADRANGLE, CHRIST
CHURCH, FROM THE SOUTH ENTRANCE
This Quadrangle was formerly cloistered. The
springers, the wall ribs of the vaulting, and the bases of
the buttresses may be seen on the two sides of the
Quadrangle shown in the picture.
The Great Hall and tower founded by Cardinal
Wolsey are on the right or southern side, whilst
opposite, over the eastern buildings, rise the tower
and spire of " The Cathedral Church of Christ in
Oxford."
Part of the basin of the fountain is seen on the left.
The time is late afternoon in summer.
College Servants of the Present and Past
" Mercury," and used as a water ordeal or court of
ultimate appeal by undergraduates. " That old pagan
fellow," he used to say, " told you more about the size
of that quadrangle than the guide-books do"; and
certainly nothing short of that or a playing fountain
would so pleasantly expound the spaciousness of
Wolsey's square. When some one proposed burning
in effigy certain officials at the time of Edward VII. 's
coronation, he " did not remember that such things
were done at George's."
He stopped to look at the new buildings of the
college, and pointing at the whitened stone, said, " I
don't believe that stone is stone at all." As he passed
an entry, full of bicycles, he said sadly, without a
thought of scorn, " It was built by public subscription,"
and with his hand in his pocket, he seemed to be
thinking that the finest thing in the world was to be
the sole founder of a college. He once had a distant
prospect of the Banbury Road, and would hke to make
night beautiful with its burning.
He still leaves Oxford by coach, or not at all. I
believe that he calls Market Street " Cheyney Lane,"
and Brasenose Lane " St. Mildred's," and Pembroke
Street " Pennyfarthing Street." To hear him talk of
St, Scholastica's day gives one a pretty notion of the
antiquity of Oxford and himself. In 1354, on that
day, several scholars found fault with the wine of a
city vintner, and threw it at his prosperous face. The
vintner gathered his neighbours and threatened. St.
Martin's bell was rung, and the city made fierce
Oxford
preparations at the accustomed summons. Then St.
Mary's bell was rung, and the University came forth
with bows and arrows and slings, "Slay," and
" Havockj" and " Give good knocks," cried the citi-
zens. The fight was long and bloody, and disastrous
to the scholars. So for many centuries the city had to
appear penitentially at St. Mary's on St. Scholastica's
day. In 1825 this institution ceased at the corpora-
tion's request. But Acamas will never forgive them,
and hardly the University for giving way. " When
laudable old customs dwindle, 'tis a sign learning
dwindles," he would say, as Hearne said, when there
were no longer any fritters at dinner. Nor is he to be
moved by the mundane glories of his college in the
schools or elsewhere. A brilliant " examinee " of the
college, and his particular aversion, having gained a
First in Law, when it was pointed out to him by the
scholar's scout, the old man remarked : " And now I
hope he knows what a privilege it is to belong to this
college."
How slow and decorous he was at the buttery hatch,
performing even his own business as if he were about
that of another. He carried a plate as if it were a
ceremony ; and his imperturbability would have com-
pletely endowed a railway porter and several judges.
In hall, when once the needs of all the diners had
been supplied, he would stand like " Teneriffe or Atlas
unremoved," an effigy, a self-constituted symbol of olden
piety and order, bent on asserting sweet ancient things,
while fellows raced into hall, and undergraduates raced
158
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE AND MERTON
TOWER, FROM CHRIST CHURCH
MEADOWS
To the left of the picture shows a portion of the east
boundary wall of the gardens of Christchurch, shadowed
by elegant silver birch.
Part of Corpus Christi College looks over the
Fellows' Garden, divided from Christchurch Meadows
by a wall, upon which is a fence of flowering dahlias.
The Chapel tower of Merton College rises grandly
against the sunset sky.
In the foreground a pathway fenced from the
Meadows runs farther on, under the old south city
wall, passing under the Fellows' Garden of Merton,
shown in another picture.
College Servants of the Present and Past
out. He was one with the coats of arms emblazoned
on the panels or the glass, and the benefactors' portraits
up among the shadows of the roof timber, and with the
dial on the grass, which says, " I change and am the
same."
He is now seldom outside the old city wall, unless
he goes in May to the river through Christ Church or
between Merton and Corpus. When he sees Tom
tower he makes the melancholy revelation that he
once heard Tom boom one time less than the appointed
number. As for the flowers in the window-boxes, it
is " cook's work " ; he has seen the like ornament " on
pastry." On a bank holiday he is clothed in extra-
ordinary dignity and gloom, and stands with an expres-
sion that wields a mace, in the hope of repelling the
pleasure-seeker from some holy or learned retreat. If
he were not mistaken for an eminent person, it would
fare ill with those whose footsteps he dogs, lest they
should commit some desecration. He can hardly
permit smoking in the quadrangles, and has to turn his
back to avoid seeing the accursed thing. At one time,
a man dared not run through the purlieus of the
Divinity School, for fear of the nod of Acamas.
He is a mirror of good manners, which he has learned
out of love, and not necessity. He has a great store
of antique information — statutes, precedents, fables —
which, as in an aumbry, he keeps fragrant by much
meditation, and is pleased to display. His elaborate
courtesies are interpreted almost as insults by the new
generations ; men wonder what they have done to
159
Oxford
deserve his withering respect. It is reported that on
one occasion, at twilight, a vigorous gentleman brushed
past him, between the Camera and Brasenose. Acamas
turned, with a soft and bitter protest against " a gentle-
man forcing what he could command," "If," said he,
" the Vice-Chancellor were here, he should know that a
gentleman had insulted an old college servant by
mistaking him for a townsman." . . . He bowed and
almost broke his heart when he recognised the beaming
face of the Vice-Chancellor.
He is the corrector of all new abuses and the
defender of old, and through his father, a college butler
and long since dead, he has the times of Trafalgar fresh
in his mind, with imposing third-hand memories of the
days when Oxford was Jacobite. The subtle distin-
guishing marks of all the colleges, as far as concerns
fashions of morals and manners, scholarship and sport,
he knows by heart, and professes such an experienced
acquaintance with like matters that in the High or by the
Long Bridges he knows at sight a "Greats" man or a
"Stinks" man or a mathematician ; of which last he is
a determined hater ; and when on one occasion he
remarked on the good looks of a certain plain
person, he was forced to explain that he meant
"good-looking for a mathematician." He would
at need devise a new coat of arms for Magdalen
or St. John's, or improve " the devil that looks over
Lincoln."
Of "his own college" he knows everything, from
the cobweb on Jeremy Taylor in the Hbrary to the
1 60
College Servants of the Present and Past
oldest beam in the kitchen roof. He knows the
benefactors and their benefactions, their rank, and
everything but the way to pronounce their names ; and
has a kind of unofficial bidding prayer in celebration of
their good deeds. His ideal of a head of a college
is an odd mixture of Dean Gaisford and Tatham of
Lincoln ; for he demands some eccentricity along with
dignity and repute, and in the course of three-quarters
of a century he has combined the two. The common-
room chairs he knows better than those who sit in them
— their history and their peculiarities, and who have sat
therein. By nice observation he is aware of the correct
way of crossing a quadrangle, and of whose furniture
should be consumed in bonfires. The spires and gate-
ways of the city are close friends to him, and " Isn't she
beautiful," or " Isn't he looking well," or " They have
their little ways," is his comment as he passes one or
other of the things that have brooded over his life
continually. He can tell when the bats will come out
of the tower in a fine January or a windy March ;
when the swifts shall scream first by All Saints'; and
the colour of New College tower when a storm is due
from the west. I can think of him as being the deity
of the place, in a mythopoeic age, and picture him
corniger, with fritillaries in his hoary locks, as the
genius of Isis, up in a niche at the Bodleian.
i6i
Oxford
The Past
I have no doubt that the past had many such to
show, and that the present, when it has graduated into
a past, will not be found wanting ; but the ways of the
college servants of old are buried deep in oblivion.
They were less numerous then, when a senior and a
junior student slept in the same room, and the latter
made the beds, etc. Upon scholars, Bible-clerks, and
the like, fell a great many of the duties which are now
the scout's — as waiting at the fellows' table in hall,
and the pleasanter although more thankless task of call-
ing up the fellows and more luxurious commoners in
the morning. Not only was the scholar or "servitor"
a practical servant for part of his time, but the regular
servants could be students also, and we may guess from
the Corpus statutes that they must sometimes have
attended lectures and have taken degrees. A story
runs that a vain scholar had sent some Latin verses to
his tutor by the hand of a servant, who quickly read
and corrected them, to the humiliation of the scholar,
when he received them back, with the comment, that
his work seemed to have been revised by one who was
acquainted with the Latin tongue. No doubt a man
of this stamp often rose, or if he stayed in college
made his attainments profitable. A man who was
once manciple at Wadham became a noted maker of
mathematical instruments. The manciple bought and
distributed provisions in the college : the cook or
162
THE ENTRANCE TO QUEEN'S COLLEGE
FROM LOGIC LANE
The cupola and entrance gate beneath, appearing across
the road at the end of Logic Lane, form one of the
most attractive objects in the High Street.
Behind the cupola shows part of the campanile and
pediment of the buildings of the College on the north
side of the Great Quadrangle. The statue is that of
Queen Caroline, consort of George H. The buildings
on the left of the picture belong to University College.
College Servants of the Present and Past
cooks and butlers were sometimes called upon to
furnish a banquet of " nine hundred messes of meat,
with twelve hundred hogsheads of beer and four
hundred and sixteen of wine," as at Balliol, when a
Chancellor of twenty-two years of age was installed :
the porter was prominent, but as yet much subordinated
to the head of the college, to whom he delivered the
keys at an early hour : the barber, who was sometimes
also the porter, was the welcome dispenser of true and
false news, and at Wadham survived until the sixties
of last century, when he insisted that the amateur actors
should have their wigs dressed by him, under pain of
being betrayed to the Warden, Of the old servants —
heu prisca fides — we can only guess at the devotion,
from the story of old Thomas Allen's servitor, who
was overawed by his master's mathematical instruments
and his reputation of astrologer, and would " impose
on freshmen or simple people " by telling them that
spirits were often to be met coming up Allen's staircase
" like bees," John Earle has preserved the ways of an
old college butler, from his experience as a fellow of
Merton.
" An old College Butler is none of the worst
students in the house, for he keeps the set hours at his
book more duly than any. His authority is great over
men's good names, which he charges many times with
shrewd aspersions, which they can hardly wipe off
without payment. His Box and Counters prove him
to be a man of reckoning ; yet he is stricter in his
accounts than a usurer, and delivers not a farthing
163
Oxford
without writing. He doubles the pain of Gallobelgicus,
for his books go out once a quarter, and they are much
in the same nature, brief notes and sums of affairs, and
are out of request as soon. His comings in are like a
Tailor's from the shreds of bread, the chippings, and
remnants of the broken crust : excepting his vails from
the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs, but
drink themselves. He divides a halfpenny loaf with
more subtility than Kekerman, and subdivides the a
primo ortum so nicely, that a stomach of great capacity
can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man,
considering his manifold temptations of drink and
strangers, and if he be overseen, 'tis within his own
liberties, and no man ought to take exceptions. He is
never so well pleas'd with his place, as when a Gentle-
man is beholding to him for showing him the Buttery,
whom he greets with a cup of single beer and sliced
manchet, and tells him 'tis the fashion of the College.
He domineers over Freshmen when they first come to
the Hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of
Cues and Cees, and some broken Latin which he has
learnt at his Bin. His faculty extraordinary is the
warming of a pair of Cards, and telling out a dozen of
Counters for Post and Pair, and no man is more
methodical in these businesses. Thus he spends his
age, till the tap of it is run out, and then a fresh one is
set abroach."
164
THE OXFORD DAY
CHAPTER VI
THE OXFORD DAY
With cares that move, not agitate the heart.
In other cities the past is a tradition, and is at most
regretted. In Oxford it is an entailed inheritance.
Nevertheless, by way of a gaudy foil to this hale
immortality, fashions flourish there more luridly, and
fade more suddenly, than elsewhere. Afraid, therefore,
that I might stumble upon anachronisms unaided, I
addressed myself as a seeker after truth to several fresh-
men who might have been expected to know practically
everything. One wished to be excused because he was
standing for the secretaryship of the Union, and was
" somewhat out of touch with ordinary life." He had
been busily opening debates in half the colleges of
Oxford, in order to prove his sound principles and high
capabilities, and enclosed this table of labours : —
nth inst., at : "That in the opinion of this
house His Majesty's government has done its best."
1 2th, at : " That the struggles of the poor to-
wards a larger and freer life are not to be discouraged."
13th, at : " That vegetarianism is opposed alike
167
Oxford
to our traditions and our present needs." Also later
(to oppose) : " That a wave of imperialism causes a
reformation in the standards of literature."
(14th, twenty-first birthday.)
1 8th, at : "That poets are the interpreters of
their age."
19th, at : "That in encouraging sports this
University approaches more nearly to the Greek ideal
than at any other period of its existence has been the
case."
20th, at : "A paper on ' Mentality in Life and
Art.' "
2 1 St, at : "That Oxford has not sufficiently
realised and reformed its national position since
imperialism became an acknowledged fact."
Another gentleman of more tender years and less
exuberance forwarded the menu of his college junior
gaudy, in itself a pleasant reminder of the more solid
occupations of undergraduates. He had made a table
of a day's life, alongside the dishes, like this : —
Soup
Macedoine. The Senior Proctor.
Fish
Turbot and Lobster Sauce. My tailor : and to buy a meerschaum.
Entrees
Tomates Farcees. My Coach.
Joint
Saddle of Mutton. If possible, my philosophy tutor.
Game
Pheasants, Aristotle.
168
The Oxford Day
Sweets
Pudding a la Belleline. Eights.
Glace
Neapolitain. The Master.
Savoury
Oysters a la Bonne Bouche. Jones's hair.
He had " no time for more."
Of the third answer I can just see this fragment, in a
fine confident penmanship, among the flames : " Oxford
life falls under three heads, which I shall discuss separ-
ately. They are Religion, Education, and Social Life.
And first of Education. My tutor breakfasts at eight.
He has forty-eight pupils, and four ladies from Somerville
College. He has one lecture and to-morrow's to prepare.
In the afternoon he will be fresh and cheerful at the
college barge, watching the races. He is writing two
books, and is on the Board of Guardians. In spite of
this the great thing about Oxford education is the way
it stamps a man — ' the cast of Vere de Vere,' as the
poet says ; no matter in what position in life his lot
is thrown, a certain easy grace "
I find a more rational description of an Oxford day
as it was in 1867, and as it was up to the pubHcation
of Mr. Rhodes's will, in the Oxford Spectator., one
of the most enduring of undergraduate periodicals.
" The whole History of Philosophy," says the writer,
E. N[olan], " is simply the story of an ordinary Oxford
day. ... In the morning, when I awake, the eastern
dawn, as it shines into my room, gives my philosophy
169
Oxford
an Oriental tinge. I turn Buddhist, and lie thinking of
nothing. Then I rise, and at once my tenets are those
of the Ionics. I think, with Thales, that Water is the
great first principle. Under this impression I take my
bath. Then, yielding to Animaxander, I begin to
believe in the unlimited, and straightway, in a rude
toilette, consume an infinite amount of breakfast. This
leads to the throwing open of my window, at which I
sit, an unconscious disciple of Anaximenes, and a
believer in the universal agency of Air. I lock my
door and sit down to read mathematics, seeming a very
Pythagorean in my loneliness and reverence for numbers.
I am disturbed by a knock. I open the door and
admit my parlour-maid, who wishes to remove the
breakfast things. She is evidently an Eleatic, for she
makes an abstraction of everything material, and reduces
my table to a state of pure being. Again I am alone,
and as I complete my toilet before my mirror, I hold,
as Heraclitus did, the principle of the becoming, and
think that it, and it only, should be the rule of
existence. I saunter to the window, and ponder upon
the advantages or otherwise of taking a walk. I am
kept at home by some theory of the Elements, such as
possessed Empedocles. Now I bethink me of my
lunch, and I become an Atomist in my hunger, as I
compare the two states of Fulness and Void. At last
Atomistic Necessity prevails, and I ring my bell. Lunch
over, I walk out, and am much amused, as usual, with
the men I meet. I notice that those who have intellect
superior to their fellows neglect their personal appearance.
170
The Oxford Day
These, I think, are followers of Anaxagoras : they
believe in vov<;, and they deny the Becoming. Others
I noticed to be bent upon some violent exercise. I
feel myself small and weak beside them, wondering
much whether I, who to them am but half a man, am
man enough to be considered, sophistically, the measure
of all things. I console myself with remarking to
myself that I surely know my work for the Schools
better than they. Behold ! I am Socratic. Virtue, I
say, consists in knowing. So I chatter away to myself,
feeling quite Platonic in my dialogue, until I meet a
luckless friend who is to be examined next day in
Moderations. I walk out with him far into the country,
talking to him about his work, and struggling against
my deeply-rooted antipathy to exertion of any kind.
Surely Aristotle could not have been more peripatetic,
or Chrysippus more Stoical. The dinner-hour makes
me Epicurean, and I pass unconsciously over many
stages of philosophy. I spend an hour in the rooms
of a friend who is reading hard for honours. I come
away but little impressed with the philosophy of the
Schoolmen. The evening passes like a dream. I
have vague thoughts of recurring to my former good
habits of home correspondence ; but this revival of
letters passes by, leaving me asleep in my chair. Here,
again, as at dinner, I doubtless pass through many
unconscious stages. At length I begin to muse upon
bed. It is a habit of mine to yield to the vulgar
fascinations of strong liquors before retiring for the
night. Philosophy, I learn, works in a circle, ever
171
Oxford
returning unto itself. It is for this reason, perhaps,
that my last waking act is inspired both by Hegel
and Thales. Hegel prompts me to crave for Spirit :
Thales influences me to temper it with Water."
Yet, if the Oxford day, as is fitting, can always be
expressed in terms of philosophy, it is sometimes more
complex, often more simple than that ; and it is longer.
It begins and ends at 7 a.m. At that hour, the student
and the fanatical novel-reader, forgetful of time, the
passive Bacchanalian, and the man who prefers the
divine, long-seated Oxford chair to bed, are usually
persuaded to retire ; for unacademic voices of servant
and starling begin to be heard in the quadrangle. The
blackbird is awake in the shrubbery. Very soon the
scout will appear, and will not know whether to say
" Good-night " or " Good-morning," and with the vacant
face of one who has slept through all the blessed hours
of night, will drive men to bed. There is a dreamy
laying aside of books — volumes of Daudet and Dickens,
Fielding and Abbe Prevost, Morley, Roberts and Poe, —
old plays and romances, — Stubbs, and the Chronicles,
Stuart pamphlets, — Thucydides, Aristotle, and later
Latin than Quintilian. If there is to be a Divinity
examination later in the morning, there are Bibles
scattered up and down, epitomes, and a sound of
men's voices asking the difference between one and
another version of a parable, and " Who was Gallio ^ "
and preparing all the playful acrobatics that will pass for
knowledge in the Schools. While these are trying to
sleep, with the gold sunlight winning through their
172
EXETER COLLEGE CHAPEL, FROM SHIP
STREET
The Chapel of the College, rebuilt by Sir George
Gilbert Scott in 1857, rises in the centre of the picture.
and with its spire forms a conspicuous feature in Ship
Street.
Below is that part of the College fronting " The
Turl."
On the right are some of the buildings of Jesus
College.
The sun of a late summer afternoon strikes the
western gable of the Chapel.
The Oxford Day
eyelids, one or two picked men are rising of their own
free will, and some because they have to run in the
Parks before a training breakfast ; others are arguing
with themselves or with their scouts that it cannot
possibly be nearly half-past seven ; or later on, that a
passing bell or a bell-wether has been mistaken for the
college chapel bell ; others expelling the awakening
scout with more frankness : some doze and doze,
with alternate pricks of conscience and necessity, and
desperately deciding to rise, have to saunter about, too
late for chapel, too early for breakfast ; the majority
murmuring that all is well, and enjoying the pleasantest
of thefts from daylight ; for, to the man who need not,
or will not, rise, the chapel bell is a blithe and kindly
spirit, that sets a crown upon the bliss of oncoming
sleep and gives a keener edge to his complacency, as
he thinks of the cold, sleepy virtue that walks in the
world below. The chaplain, a man of habit, is also
getting up. No one has ever seen a fellow. late for
chapel.
When the service is over, those who have attended
are either awake or asleep again. The service itself is
of an awakening kind, and has a vigour that is unknown
outside Oxford.
Oh, dear and saintly chaplain,
Time toils after you in vain !
When you stroked the Eight to glory,
Did you prove this quite so plain,
As at morning chapel daily
And at evensong again ?
Oxford
So run the verses which express the kind of vigour in
vogue.
Now the perfervid reading man, and the man whose
genealogical tree is conspicuous for a constant succession
of maiden aunts, go to their cocoa and eggs : and,
within three hours afterwards, the average man, to
porridge, fish, eggs and bacon, coffee and oranges ; the
decadent, to cigars, liqueurs and wafers ; the aesthete, to
his seven wonders and a daffodil ; and some, of all
classes, to the consolations of philosophy and soda-water.
Only the last-named habitually break their fast in
solitude. For it is in Oxford the most social meal of
the day. It may begin at any time from eight until
half-past eleven — anything later being " brunch " — and
last until half-past one. Some even believe that an
invitation to breakfast embraces the afternoon. Lectures
seldom interfere with the meal, since the man who leaves
for their sake is not usually missed. A very early
breakfast is pregnant with yawns, and may also be for-
gotten ; a very late one is unhappily curtailed. Ten
o'clock is an ideal to be striven after. The host has to
be studious not to invite two men who are " blues," or
who are entered for the same examinations, or who are
freshmen from the same school, which would be apt
to produce treatises instead of conversation. It is
dangerous also to have two epigrammatists. For that
leads to a game of shuttlecock and battledore between
the two, and of patience among the rest. . . . He knows
that four men incapable of these things are coming,
and as he peeps from his bedroom to see that all is ready,
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The Oxford Day
he hears their steps and laughter echoing up the stairs.
He is rapidly surveying them all in his mind, wondering
how such excellent ingredients will mix, when they enter,
having picked one another up by good fortune on the
way, and already got rid of a possible tendency to talk
about politics, weather, or dreams. They discuss every-
thing. One who is bound to be a fellow starts on " the
assthetic value of dons." One who has never left
England offers a suggestive remark on Swiss scenery
or the effect of palms against a sunrise in the Pacific.
The transitions are indescribably rapid ; yet the link of
merely an epigram or a laugh, or possibly the very sense
of contrast and incongruity, makes the whole run on as
some fine hedge of maple, hawthorn, holly, elm, beech,
and wild cherry runs on, and is fine and nothing else,
except to a botanist. The talk is a play in five acts :
each man is in turn a chorus. But whether the subject
be freshmen, or Disraeli, or Sancho Panza, or the English
aristocracy, it is treated as it never was before. Perhaps
that is the result of the detached attitude of a number
of very young men. Perhaps it is because each in
turn, of the five average men, is touched with genius
temporarily by accretion from the other four. One
says a dull thing, another a silly thing, a third a rash
thing, a fourth a vague thing, and straightway the fifth
catches fire and blazes with something of the true light
from heaven, and he not less than the rest is astonished.
The spirit of the conversation is as different from the
prandial spirit as shortbread from wedding cake. It
has neither the richness of that nor the frivolity of tea.
175
Oxford
The breakfast talker seems to depend very little on
memory. He remembers fewer stories, less of the book
he read on the night before, than at a later meal. He
is thrown more entirely upon the resources of his own
fantasy. The experience of sleep still lies like a great
water between him and yesterday. In the cold, young,
golden light, among the grey stones of the quadrangle,
the brain, too, rejoices in its own life, and forgets to
look before and after. Habit is weaker. He catches
another glimpse of the " clouds of glory," if only in a
mirage. He is renovated by the new day ; and although
by dinner-time he will have advanced to warmer
sympathies and a more tranquil satisfaction, there will
then be something more cynical in his indolent optimism
than in the sharp but easily warded points of morning
wit. . . . Of course, a breakfast party of men in
training for the Torpids is another thing. That is a
question of arithmetic. So, too, with a breakfast given
formally to freshmen, which is mainly a question of
time and stories about dons. Breakfasts with fellows
are either of the best kind, or they are ceremonies.
There are some colleges, where the fellows not only feel
that there is no need of condescension, but they do not
condescend : the elder is not expected to be preter-
naturally simple, nor the younger to be abstruse. In
other colleges, such breakfasts of the great and small are
sometimes farces and sometimes ceremonies. The don
knows that the other's knowledge of the Republic is
small ; the undergraduate is equally aware of the fact :
the one assumes that he has an index to the other's
176
The Oxford Day
mind ; the other that one so scathing in his opinion of
essays will be the same in his treatment of little quips
about the Colonial Secretary or accounts of pheasant-
shooting in the Christmas vacation : one is determined
to pounce ; the other not to be pounced upon. The
scout who changes the dishes indicates whether it is a
ceremony or a farce. If he smiles, it is the one ; if he
does not, it is the other. Not everybody, indeed, in
these colleges has the same misfortune, though any one
may, as the young man who carefully prepared a
paraphrase of one of the obscurest articles in the
Encyclopedia Britannica and two brand new epigrams
artfully inwoven, and served them up as he sat down
at the breakfast table of the bursar, who smiled and
commented moodily : " What a boon the Encyclopedia
is to the tired man ! " But breakfast with even the best
of dons has this disadvantage, that he can bring it to
an end with a word ; so that his guest may afterwards
be seen disconsolately reading a newspaper, and feeling
that to have eaten food is hardly more to have breakfasted
than to have dined.
Between nine and one o'clock the different species
of Oxford kind are either within doors — sleeping, talk-
ing, or working — or to be seen in various conditions
of unrest ; observers and observed in the High, in pairs
or singly ; and, if freshmen, either stately in scholars'
gowns or apparently anxious to convince others that
they have just picked up their commoners' gowns ;
sauntering to the book-shops, or to look at a cricket
pitch or a dog ; or hurrying to lectures with an earnest-
177 12
Oxford
ness that strangely disappears when they are seated
and the lecture is begun.
In the stream of men there is one thin black line
that is unwavering — the line of men, with white fillets
of sacrifice under their chins, going to the examination
Schools. This is the only place in the world where the
plough is still wrought into a weapon of offence. They
are under the care of a suitable, ferocious, wild man, who
is one of the Old Guard of the opposition to women
at Oxford ; and in his bleak invitation to ladies, to
proceed to their appointed rooms, lays terrible stress
upon the word " women," as if it were a term of
abuse in his strange tongue. He is partly respon-
sible for the reply of an undergraduate to an American
who asked, what might be the name of the buildings
which he so admired and which made him feel at
home ?
" That," said the undergraduate, " is the Martyrs'
Memorial."
" And who are those going in .'' "
"They are the Martyrs."
" But I thought they were burned three hundred
years ago ? "
" Sir," said the undergraduate impressively, " they
are martyred twice daily."
" Well, I guess Oxford is very Middle Age and all
that, but I didn't know it went so far as that " : and
the humane visitor went away, talking of agitation in
the New Tork Herald.
Of all Oxford pastimes, that of going to the book-
178
ENTRANCE TO THE DIVINITY SCHOOL
The doorway through which a servant with a silver
" poker " is preceding the Vice-Chancellor leads to
the old Divinity School.
The window at the end of the lobby — usually called
the " Pig Market " — looks into Exeter College garden.
The Oxford Day
shop after breakfast is one of the most wise. There
the undergraduate meets the don whose lecture he has
slighted ; in fact, he meets every one there, or escapes
them, if he thinks fit, behind one of the tall piles.
Some prefer leap-frog and hopping contests in the
quadrangle. In some colleges they are said to read
Plato under the trees in the morning : in others, it is to
be presumed, in spite of the negligent capers of the
wearers, that the hours are spent in choosing the
necktie or waistcoat best suited to " flame in the fore-
head of the morning sky." Another amusement is to
go to the Divinity School and see the Vice-Chancellor,
seated between the two neat and restless proctors, con-
ferring degrees. Near, and on either side of the dais,
the ladies are enjoying the scene, with no traces of any
selfish "I would an' if I could," Below them sit dons
who are to present members of their colleges, — a pale,
superb, militant priest conspicuous among the rows of
English gentlemen. Farther removed from authority
is the Opposition, half a hundred undergraduates, who
merrily applaud the perambulations of the mace-bearer
or the deportment of their friends. Pale blue, and
scarlet, and peach-coloured hoods make a brave con-
trast with the dead grey light and colourless stone of
traceried ceiling and pillared walls, and the dim foliage
of trees and ivy outside.
Lectures are a less stately pleasure. Some lecturers
walk up and down the room as in a cage, and pause only
for a more genial remark than usual, with uplifted gown
and back to the blazing fire. Others laugh at their
179
Oxford
own jokes, or even at jokes which they leave unexpressed.
Some are stern and impassioned : some appear to be
proposing a health ; others, again, a vote of condolence.
One came in clothed for travel, twenty minutes late,
and after a few remarks, said that brevity was the most
pardonable of the virtues, and that he had to catch a
train ; and left. In the old days, Merton was famous
for Schoolmen, Christ Church for poets, All Souls' for
orators, Brasenose for disputants, and so on, says Fuller.
That is not quite so now. Yet, as then, " all are
eminent in some one kind or other," although the
undergraduate does not always perceive it. Some are
noted for research, some for views, some for condensa-
tion. An impartial observer once remarked that,
" even when he is abridging an abridgment, an Oxford
lecturer always had views." A scratching, coughing,
whispering silence is respectfully observed. Once upon
a time, a lady (not English) entered a famous hall,
guide-book in hand, spectacles on nose ; went from
place to place, contemplated all, and incurred only the
amazement of the lecturer and the admiration of the
audience. It is to be noticed that the audience of what
M. Bardoux good-naturedly calls Monks, is in most
cases far more interested in note-books than in the
lecturer. Some will spend three consecutive hours in
lecture rooms, and therein compile very curious antho-
logies. Even that does not conduce to enthusiasm ;
and nobody in recent years has been electrified in an
Oxford lecture room. " I have discovered," writes an
outsider, " with much difficulty that there are two
1 80
The Oxford Day
classes in Oxford, the learned and the unlearned : my
difficulty arose from the fact that the latter were with-
out coarseness and the former without enthusiasm."
And certainly in a city that loves to light bonfires, and
is never more herself than when she is welcoming a
guest, enthusiasm is astonishingly well concealed. It
may be detected occasionally among gentlemen who
are conducting East-Enders from quadrangle to quad-
rangle, or among those who like the ground-ivy beer
at Lincoln College on Ascension Day, or among those
who salute financiers and others in the act of becoming
Doctors of Civil Law at the Encaenia. It was said that
some one unsuccessfully spread his gown as a carpet for
the late Mr. Rhodes's feet : it is certain that some played
upon him with little jets of truth very heartily, and
asked Socratic questions, on that august occasion.
At luncheon there is, however, some enthusiasm ;
not for the meal, which is commonly a stupid one, but
for the long afternoon, to be spent in the parks, or on
the river, or in the country, east to Wheatley, west to
Fyfield. These matters, or the prospect of a long
bookish afternoon indoors or (in the summer) under a
willow on the Cherwell or Evenlode, encroach too
absolutely upon luncheon to allow it to be anything
more than an affair of knives and forks. As for the
country, a man used frequently to walk so as to know
all the fields for twenty miles on every side. But the
walker is vanishing. Games take away their thousands ;
bicycles their hundreds ; the motor car destroys twos
and threes. On Sundays walking is almost fashionable ;
i8i
Oxford
on week-days it is in danger of becoming notorious as
the hall-mark of a " reading man." An uninteresting
youth was once asked, as a freshman, what exercise he
favoured, and replied, " I belong to the reading set and
go walks." The remark was generally considered to
lower him to the rank of the Intellectuels^ or as the
"Guide Conversationelle " translates the word, the Prigs.
That guide, which appeared in the J.C.R. in June 1899,
is so characteristic in its humour that I cannot apologise
for quoting from it : —
Guide Conversationelle de l'^tranger a Oxford
L'Americain.
L'Espion.
Le Chauvinisme.
Le Morgue.
Le Noble.
Le Bourgeois pauvre.
Le Mauvais Repas.
Le Repas.
Le Culte.
Le Fou.
Le Lion.
L'Intellectuel.
Merci.
Vous me devez cinq francs.
Je suis Athce .
II est dans le mouvement.
II a manque son coup.
Suivre les cours.
Republicain de Vieille Roche.
Opportuniste.
Socialiste.
Collectiviste.
Le vertu.
Etre vicieux.
The Anglo-Saxon.
The proctor.
Imperialism.
Self-respect.
The good fellow.
The tosher [an unattached student].
Hall [dinner].
The Grid [iron ; an Oxford social
club].
The Salvation Army.
The earnest man.
The don.
The Prig.
Oh ! it doesn't matter.
I am broad.
He is a gentleman.
I hate that man.
Reading for a second.
Little Englander.
Conservative {or') Liberal
Radical.
Socialist.
Our English vi^ay.
To be out of it.
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The Oxford Day
II arrivera. His father got that place.
J'ai peur. Where's the good of ragging ?
C'est faux. In some respects you are right.
Tu en as menti. Surely you must be mistaken.
Abruti. My dear Sir !
The river (or Fapres midt) is the new college of the
nineteenth century. As an educational institution it is
unquestioned. The college barges represent perhaps the
most successful Oxford architecture of the age. Cer-
tainly it was a thought of no mean order which set that
tapering line of gaudy galleys to heave and shimmer
along the river-side, against a background of trees and
grass, and themselves a background for the white figures
of the oarsmen. It is a fine lesson in eloquence to listen
to the coaches shouting reprimand and advice, in
sentences one or two words long, to a panting crew.
One can see the secret of English success in the meek
reception which a number of hard-working, conscien-
tious, abraded men give to the abuse of an idler on the
bank. On the afternoon of the races all is changed.
The man who yesterday shouted " Potato sacks ! " or
" Pleasure boat ! " now screams " Well rowed all ! " Be-
fore and behind him flows all of the University that
can run a mile. The faces of all are expressive in every
inch ; all restraint of habit or decorum is gone for the
time being. The racing boats make hardly a sound ;
and for the most part the rowers hear not a sound from
the bank, but only the click of their own rowlocks.
Here and there a rattle is twirled ; a bell rings ; a
pistol is fired ; and a pair or several pairs of boats
creep into the side, winners and losers, and languidly
183
Oxford
watch the still competing boats as they pass. The noise
of rattles, bells, pistols, whistles, bagpipes, frying-pans,
and shouts can be heard in all the colleges and in the
fields at Marston and Hinksey, where it has a kind of
melody. Close at hand, it has a charm for the experi-
enced tympanum : for in the cries of the victorious
colleges the joy of victory is too great to allow of any
discordant crow of mere triumph ; the cries of those
about to be beaten are too determined to have in them
anything of hate. Such is the devout enthusiasm of
the runners on the bank that if their own college boat
is bumped they will sometimes run on to cheer the
next boat that passes. The mysteries of harmony are
never so wonderful as when, opposite the barge of a
college that has made its bump, the sound of a hundred
voices and a hundred instruments goes up, from dons,
clergymen, old members of the college, future bishops,
governors, brewers, schoolmasters, literary men, all
looking very much the same, and in their pride of
college forgetting all other pride. " If the next great
prophet comes in knickerbockers, with good legs and
a megaphone, he will be received in Oxford," says one
as he leaves the river. " Was a prophet possible .''
Would he be a warrior, or an orator, or a quiet actor
and persuader ^ Out of the wilderness, or out of the
slum ? " Such were the questions asked. " In any
case he would not be listened to in Oxford," thought
one. " Why not ? provided his accent was good,"
thought another. " Comfort yourself," said a third ;
" some one would ask at hall table what school he came
184
THE RIVER ISIS
On the right is the goki-and-white barge of Magdalen
College undergoing repair. The masts and barges of
other Colleges line the side of the river, and Folly
Bridge closes the prospect.
The Oxford Day
from ; the question would go round ; and the prophet
would retreat from the refrigerator." " But suppose
him a sort of Kipling, twenty or thirty feet broader
every way "
" Send up some buttered crumpets and slow poison "
was the epitaph of the conversation, which was, after
all, between children of a cynical age and in the hour
of tea. But there is many a true thing said at tea in
Oxford. The hours from four to seven are nothing if
not critical. It is an irresponsible, frivolous time, and
an interregnum between the tyranny of exercise and the
tyranny of food. Nothing is now commended ; yet
nothing is envied. I suspect that some of the causes of
the University love of parody might be found by an
investigator in the Oxford tea. Over his crumpet or
" slow poison " the undergraduate who is no wiser than
he should be legislates for the world, settles even higher
matters, and smilingly accepts a viceroyalty from
Providence. With some it is a festival of Slang —
venerable goddess ! I have heard a philologist trace
a little Oxford phrase to the thieves of Manchester a
century ago or more. Now he plans profound or witty
speeches for the Union, devises " rags " and rebellions,
and writes for the undergraduate magazines, and has
his revenge in a few well- chosen words upon coaches,
dons, captains of football, and all forms of Pomposity,
Dulness, and Good Sense. " Common-sense," says one,
" is nonsense a la mode'' He luxuriates in the criticism
of life, and blossoms with epigrams. He says in his
heart, " In much wisdom is much grief : and he that
185
Oxford
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," and sets him-
self to make sayings which, if not truer than proverbs,
are funnier. Others prowl : i,e. they go through that
promiscuous calling upon acquaintances which is the
bane of half its beneficiaries. Some of these prowlers
seem to live by this kind of canvassing — thieves of
others' time and generous givers of their own. They
will boast of having taken twenty teas in one afternoon.
But on Sunday comes their judgment. They wear a
soberer aspect on their way to the drawing-rooms of
Oxford hostesses. In the comfortable chairs sit the
incurable habitues — cold, saturnine spectators, or im-
pudent, stifF-hearted epigrammatists, handing round at
regular intervals neat slices from the massy joints of
their erudition or their wit. They smile sadly and yet
complacently over their tea-cups as the prowler enters.
They wait until the victim is in right position, viz. with
a perfectly true remark about the weather, or Sunday,
or sport, or dentists ; and then suddenly " slit the thin-
spun life " with an unseasonable query or corroboration.
The hostess smiles imperceptibly. In a few moments the
prowler is gone. "Mr. ," says the hostess, "you pro-
nounce the sweetest obituaries I ever meet, but I have
never known you to pronounce them over the deceased."
Here glow the lamps,
And teaspoons clatter to the cosy hum
Of scientific circles. Here resounds
The football field with its discordant train,
The crowd that cheers but not discriminates. . . .
There are also teas with the young, the beautiful,
i86
The Oxford Day
and the virtuous in the plain and exclusive northernmost
haunts of learning in Oxford. The University could
not well do without their sweet influences. Yet if men,
in their company, are often better than themselves, as
is only right, they are perhaps less than themselves.
Also, in wit carnivals, it is permitted to women to use
all kinds of weapons, from a sigh to a tea-urn ; to men
they are not permitted, although they have nothing
sharper or more rankling in their armoury. Hence, on
the part of generous women, a sort of pity, and on the
part of men some timidity and (short of rudeness) ter-
giversation. And I am not privileged to give an
account of a real Somerviile tea.
But it is a thing impossible to praise in rhyme or
prose the pleasures of tea at Oxford — perhaps especially
in autumn, as the sun is setting after rain — when a man
knows not whether it is pleasanter to be rained upon
at Cumnor, or to be dried again by his fire— and the
bells are ringing.
Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena,
Is of such power to stir up joy as this,
To life so friendly.
Perhaps, as you light candles, and ask, "What is warmth
without light ? " your companion replies, " A minor
poet" ; and when you ask again in irritation, "What
is light without warmth ^ " he is ready with, "An edition
of Tennyson with notes." And not even the recol-
lection of such things and worse can spoil the charm of
Oxford tea. Then it is that the homeliness of Oxford
187
Oxford
is dearest. And what a carnival of contrasts in men
and manners can be seen in a little room, " Oxford,"
writes the Oxford Spectator^ —
Oxford is a stage,
And all the men in residence are players :
They have their exeats and examinations ;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the Freshman,
Stumbling and stuttering in his tutor's rooms.
And then the aspiring Classman, with white tie
And shy, desponding face, creeping along
Unwilling to the Schools. Then, at the Union,
Spouting like Fury, with some woeful twaddle
Upon the " Crisis." Then a Billiard-player,
Full of strange oaths, a keen and cunning card,
Clever in cannons, sudden and quick at hazards.
Seeking a billiard reputation
Even in the pocket's mouth. And then the Fellow,
His fair, round forehead with hard furrows lined.
With weakened eyes and beard of doubtful growth,
Crammed with old lore of useless application.
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and study-worn Professor,
With spectacles on nose and class at side ;
His youthful nose has grown a world too large
For his shrunk face ; and his big, manly voice.
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all.
That ends this strange, eventful history
In utter donnishness and mere nonentity.
Without respect, or tact, or taste, or anything.
I said that undergraduate magazine humour was a
tea-table flower. I should have said that it flowers at
tea and is harvested after dinner. The penning of it
is a nocturnal occupation, and the best wit is sometimes
the result of that pregnant nervousness which comes
from competing with time. It was until very lately
i88
THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE AND OLD
CLARENDON BUILDINGS
The steps from Cat Street lead to the enclosure of the
Theatre, the east entrance of which is seen. Above
the entrance, and crowning the roof of the Theatre,
rises Sir Christopher Wren's cupola, from the windows
of which a panorama appears of unsurpassed beauty
and interest.
On the right of the picture is the south front of the
Clarendon Building.
The Oxford Day
a tradition that undergraduate journalism should be
anonymous. Of many good and feeble things the
authorship will now probably never be known. " Hath
the rain a father ? or who hath begotten the drops of
dew ^ " And it is an odd thing that so few reputations
have been promised or made therein. Probably the
writers of the Cambridge Light Green and the " Lambkin
Papers" in the J.C.R. of Oxford have alone not only
shown but fulfilled their promise in contributions to
an undergraduate periodical. The explanation is that
the cleverest men are content to produce either parody
or what is narrowly topical, and both of these are
usually born in their graves. " Parody," said a don,
" is always with us, and nearly always against us."
Parody and its companions are, in fact, a sort of un-
official bull-dogs, that persecute all forms of bad, and
even good, behaviour which do not come within the
proctor's jurisdiction. The proctor is a favourite
victim. " O vestment of velvet and virtue," runs an
obvious parody m~~X^\^ Shotover Papers of 1874, by
" Gamble Gold," —
O vestment of velvet and virtue,
O venemous victors of vice.
Who hurt men who never have hurt you.
Oh, calm, cruel, colder than ice.
Why wilfully wage ye this war ? is
Pure pity purged out of your breast ?
O purse-prigging Procuratores,
O pitiless pest !
The wise fool, the foolish wise man, the impostor, and
the ungainly fanatic, are all game to the undergraduate
189
Oxford
satirist. " We draw our bow at a venture," he writes ;
*' so look to it, don and undergraduate, boating men
and reading men ; look to it, O Union orators, states-
men of the future ; look to it, ye patrons of St. PhiHp's
and St. Aldate's ; look to it, ye loungers in the Parks ;
look to it, ye Proctors, and thou, O Vice-Chancellor,
see that your harness be well fitted, that between its
joints no arrow shall pierce. Our aim is careless, but
perhaps it may strike deep ; if we cannot smite a king
we shall contentedly wing a freshman." Not seldom
this note of Titanic defiance is struck by the freshman
himself. If he cannot be an example of what is most
subtle in literature or most brilliant in life, he will
peacefully consent to be in his own person a warning
against the commonplace. He is, indeed, very often
among the parodists, although as a rule he does not get
beyond imitation. Perhaps the large percentage of
parodists will account for that timidity of poets which
has left Cambridge almost without a tribute from its
countless band. The gay, sarcastic man who dines
next to you, or is a fellow-officer at the Union, is bound
to hear of your serious follies in print, and will as
infallibly make that an excuse for rushing into print
himself. I have even heard it seriously urged that the
number of critics in Oxford accounts for the silence of
nearly every one else, and that not the irresponsible
undergraduate alone blasts the blossoms of wisdom
while he takes the sting out of foolishness. A cautious
use of high teas might be recommended as a step
towards seriousness.
190
The Oxford Day
Some, even to-day, fly speedily from tea to work.
Upon others, and in some degree upon these, dinner
lays a cheerful hand in anticipation. The optimist
becomes "happier and wiser both." The very pes-
simist rises at least to a cynic. Under the head of
dinner I include, first and least, the discussion of the
cook's poetry and prose, if one may be permitted to
make the distinction, since his joints have been called
" poems in prose " ; second, the feast of reason, etc. ;
third, those acts of pleasure or duty which came natu-
rally to the wise diner. The first two are hardly
distinct acts. "We devour^'' says Leigh Hunt, "wit
and argument, and discuss a turkey and chine." The
word " dinner " was once derived from the Greek word
for terrible, and was held to imply not so much its
terrors for the after-dinner speaker, as for the man
who came simply to eat. Most Oxford colleges have
accordingly an elaborate and forcible set of rules for
humiliating the sordid man. In old days he apparently
quoted from the Bible, which every one knew, just as
every one knows the Times to-day ; and consequently a
quotation from the Bible was punished along with puns,
quotations from Latin and Greek, and oaths. As un-
becoming to a feast of reason, flannels and other clothes
belonging to the barbaric hours of life are forbidden.
The unpunctuality of such as obviously come only to
devour is treated in the same way. Gross inadvertence
or apparent physical incapacity to do anything but eat
have also been punished in gentlemen both punctual
and suitably clothed ; but these and other excesses of
191
Oxford
virtuous intention are not always sanctioned by the
High Table. The punishment usually takes the form
of a fine to the extent of two quarts of beer, which the
sufferer has to put in circulation among his judges.
Punning, too, is attacked. It was time that the pun
should go. It was becoming too perfect, and a
monopoly of the mathematical mind. Two hundred
years ago men laughed at this: — "A chaplain in the
University of Oxford, having one leg bigger than the
other, was told that his legs might be chaplains too, for
they were never like to be fellows^ To-day, it is
doubtful whether it would be honoured by the fine or
" sconce." Yet the pun has in a sense been supplanted
not very worthily by the " spoonerism." That, too,
has become a very solemn affair. It is in the hands of
calculating prodigies, and men are expected to laugh at
" pictures defeated " instead of " features depicted " and
the like. It smacks of the logic required for a pass
degree, while the old puns sentent plus le vin que Vhuile.
Yet the spoonerism is venerable in years ; and Anthony
Wood records among his pieces of humour the saying
of Dr. Ratcliff of Brasenose, that " a proud man will
buy a dagger or die a beggar." Nor is the anecdote
extinct, as one may learn from the laughter at any
High Table, where it is known that men do not discuss
ontology. Oxford humour, at and after dinner, may
be divided under these heads : —
(i) The Rag.
(2) The Epigram.
(3) Humour.
192
The Oxford Day
The first, saving when it amounts to house-breaking or
assault, or should endanger the perpetrator under the
last Licensing Act, consists in the thoughtful preparation
and execution of something unexpected for the benefit
of an offending person, or in the elaboration of some-
thing visibly and audibly funny for fun's sake at the
expense of the artists alone. It was " a rag," for
example, two hundred and fifty years ago, as also more
recently, to make a various and crowded ceremony of
the enforced exit of a popular undergraduate. The
hero may be mounted on a hearse or a steam-roller, and
proceed with stately accompaniment. Or he may go in
pink with a pack of bull-dogs, and whips dressed as
proctors, to the tune of " The Conquering Hero."
Some prefer twenty-four barrel-organs, if obtainable.
But the " rag " is a branch of decorative art that
deserves a volume with illustrations. No one who has
not studied it can guess at the beautiful work which is
devoted to the conversion of a gentleman's bedroom
into a sitting-room. Any one who would teach us how
divine a thing the rag can be made, would be heartily
thanked. I may remark, in passing, that it gives full
play to the intellect, — is, in fact, a counterpart to the
occupations of the schoolmen, and is neither less
practical nor less ingenious, and reaches its highest
perfection in the hands of scholars who can do nothing
without remembering Plato, and say nothing without
remembering Aristophanes. Lest I should be suspected
of not being on the side of the angels in recent con-
troversy, I will give no examples, save a trifling one
193 13
Oxford
which has just been recalled for me by a volume of
Hazlitt. We made a supper party of six with Corydon,
our host at in Oxford. His gestures (particularly
a gracious way of bowing his head as he smiled) had a
magic that quickly made our number seem inevitable
and right. Very soon all were talking eagerly in
harmonious alternation. A choicely laden board of
cold viands, which none seemed to have noticed, stood
unvisited, and was finally cleared. Corydon was speak-
ing (of nothing in the least important) when the servant
carried in a strange but dainty course of little, fine old
books that sent the conversation happily into every
nook that rivers from Helicon visit. Again and again
came in dishes of the same character, for which
Corydon's purse and library had been ransacked. The
wealth of how many provinces — to use an honoured
phrase — had gone to the preparation of that meal !
" And by the way, I have some cold fowls and wine
and fruit ready," the host said suddenly. . . . One
found that Shelley and champagne were good bosom
friends ; another that a compote of port, Montaigne,
and pomegranate was incomparable. . . . This Hazlitt
also was at that excellent supper and " rag." Nor can
I omit a mention of the strong sculptor who strove all
night in the midst of a wintry quadrangle, in order to
astonish the college with a snow statue of the most
jovial fellow of the society, with a cigar between his
teeth and a bottle in each hand. Mr. Godley has sung
of a more boisterous rag, " the raid the Saxon made
on the Cymru men," which was in this way : —
194
The Oxford Day-
Mist upon the marches lay, dark the night and late,
Came the bands of Saxondom, knocking at a gate, —
Mr. Jones the person was whom they came to see —
He, they said, had courteously asked them in to tea.
Did they, when that college gate open wide was thrown,
Go and see the gentleman, as they should have done ?
No : in Impropriety's indecorous tones
(Quite unmeet for tea-parties) loud they shouted "Jones ! "
Straightway did a multitude answer to their call —
Un^ dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech — Mr. Joneses all —
Loud as Lliwedd's echoes ring all asserted, "We
Never asked these roistering Saesnegs in to tea ! "
Like the waves of Anglesey, crashing on the coast,
Came the Cymru cohorts then : countless was their host :
Retribution stern and swift evermore assails
Him who dares to trifle with gallant little Wales. . . .
One who might be supposed to know said in
1899 that where a Cambridge man would know an
article from the Encyclopaedia Britannica by heart, an
Oxford man would abridge it in an epigram ; and
there, he contended, was a difference and a distinction.
But the epigram is said to be dying. It were greatly
to be regretted, if that were true, since the epigram
was the handsomest medium ever chosen by inexperi-
ence for its own expression. As poetry is a criticism
of life by livers, so the epigram is a criticism of life by
those who have not lived. It used to be the toga of
the infant prodigy at Oxford. " If only life were a
dream, and I could afford hansoms ! " or " A little
Jowett is a dangerous thing ! " used to pass muster in
a crowd of epigrams. But I seemed to see the skirt of
^95
Oxford
the departing epigram this year, when a young man
exclaimed that he had discovered that, " After all, life
is the thing," in a discussion concerning conduct and
literature : and the shock was hardly lessened by the
critical repartee that the remark was " not only true
but inadequate." A few years ago smaller notions than
that were not allowed to go into the world without
their fashionable suit. That was the epigram. It was
a verbal parallel to legerdemain. The quickness of the
fancy deceived the brain : or rather the brain made it
a point of courtesy to be deceived. For there was a
kindly conspiracy between the speaker and the hearer
in the matter of epigrams. A certain degree of skill
was expected of the latter, who knew almost infallibly
whether a saying was an epigram, just as he would have
known a hearse or a skiff. It was the jingling bell
which every one but the exceptionally clever wore in his
cap, to prove that he aspired to talk. All were epigram-
matists, and regarded as alien nothing epigrammatical.
When " Lady Windermere's Fan " was played at
Oxford, even those who had not heard them before
laughed at the epigrams in the Club scene. One such
remarked to a persevering imitator of Wilde : " The
epigrams in ' Lady Windermere ' were a faint echo ot
yourself." But these are other times, and when the
same youth, bald and still young, very recently ventured
to clothe a little truism archaically, the curate next to
him touched a note of horror mingled with contempt
as he said, "That sounded like an epigram." In one
respect an Oxford dinner is the better for the absence
196'
The Oxford Day
of epigram. The machine-made article is impossible.
It used to be as ineffectual as the prayers of Thibet.
A man might be seen, forgetful of the world, nursing
his faculties from soup to ice, in the gestation of an
epigram. Thus it tended to cast a shadow over con-
versation, and to replace the genial, slow, and whist-like
alternations of good talk with the sudden follies of
snap or the violences of bridge. Breakfast itself was
sometimes made the occasion of duels, with a thrust and
parry not oftener than twice in a course. A man
would come melancholy to luncheon because he had not
hit upon a good thing in the lecture which preceded it.
Nevertheless, there was something to be said for the
manufacture, if not for the manufacturer. His epigrams
could be repeated spontaneously by another. Thus an
elderly morose undergraduate, unable to knot a bow,
would one day ejaculate at the wrong moment :
"A woman is never too stupid to be loved, nor too
clever to love." The next evening a simple and
dashing boy would make a hit with it, by nice
judgment of time and place. Much applause was
sometimes accorded to the wit of laborious, obscure
young men who were content to father their offspring
upon the illustrious. Thus, one undergraduate was
once found slaving at an original work, entitled
" Addenda to the Posthumous Humour of the late
Master of Balliol."
Of humour, the third divison, there is nothing to be
said. It has been met with at the Union, in spite of
the notice : —
197
Oxford
Lost !
A sense of humour
by the following gentlemen
They will take in exchange early num-
bers of Sword and Trowel or a selection
of hatbands.
For the most part, the heavier vices and lighter virtues
of speech are said to flourish there. " It is a pity," said
a critic of the Union, " that so many ingenious youths
should disarm themselves by pretending to be in the
House of Commons, which they rival as a club." A
Frenchman has said that its histrionic wealth at one
time equalled the house of Moliere. Indeed, as a home
of comedy it is the most amusing and accomplished in
Oxford ; and on that account, probably, the public
theatre seldom provides anything but opera and farce.
A bland, clever youth, stooping like a candle in hot
July — his body and a scroll of foolscap quivering with
emotion, as he suggests to a smiling house that the
Conservative party should bury its differences under the
sole management of Mr. Redmond : a stiff, small,
heroic figure — with a mouth that might sway armies,
a voice as sweet as Helicon, as irresistible and continuous
as Niagara — pouring forth praise of the English aristoc-
racy and the Independent Labour Party, to a house
that believes or disbelieves, and applauds : a minute,
tormented skeleton, acrobatic and ungainly, so eloquent
on the futility of Parliament, that he might govern the
Empire, if he could govern himself : one who is not
really comfortable without a cigarette, yet awes the
house by his superb complacency, as he utters noM^ and
198
The Oxford Day
then a languid epigram about the Irish peasantry or
indigo, in the brief intervals of an apparent colloquy
with himself : — these and a multitude of the fervid, the
weighty, the listless, the perky, and the dull, are among
the Union orators of yesterday. " I went to the Union
to be amused," says one. "They were debating a
question of literature. A brilliant man opened ; a
learned opposed. Others followed — some for, some
against, the motion ; others again made observations.
I was not disappointed. I was edified. There was no
research. There was little originality. But there was
a dazzling simplicity and lucidity, and an extraordinary
power of treating controversially the profoundest
matters as if they were common knowledge ; above all,
the reserved gestures, the self-control, were dignified,
and made me believe that I was listening to the opinions
of an assembly of middle-aged men of the world, and
not a handful of students not yet past their majority."
But the glories of Union oratory are weekly : the
theatre is consequently a favourite evening lounge ;
some even prefer it on Thursdays. It is noticeable
that the house is more familiar than elsewhere in its
praise or disapproval of the players. Half a dozen in
the dress circle will hold a (rather one-sided) conversa-
tion with the stage for half an evening. It is also
customary, and especially on Saturdays, for the audience
to sing the choruses of songs to their taste many times
over, and then to revive them in the quiet streets.
Banquets, and the reception given to the speeches of
actors and managers, and the nature of those speeches
199
Oxford
as well, prove the hearty fellowship between University
and stage. It has long been so. " At a stage play in
Oxford," says one old author, " (at the King's Arms in
Holywell) a Cornishman was brought in to wrestle
with three Welshmen, one after another, and when he
had worsted them all, he called out, as his part was,
Have you any more Welshmen ? Which words one
of Jesus College took in such indignation that he leaped
upon the stage and threw the player in earnest." It
must be admitted, however, that such familiarities on
the stage itself are now unknown.
To a stranger walking from the Union or the theatre,
after Tom', has sounded the ideal hour of studious
retirement, Oxford might well appear to be a nest of
singing birds. The windows of brilliantly lighted
rooms, with curtains frequently undrawn, in dwelling-
house or college, reveal rows of backs and rows of
faces, with here one at a piano and there one standing
beside, singing lustily, while the rest try with more or
less success to concentrate their talents upon the chorus :
probably they are singing something from Gaudeamus,
Scar lei and Blue, or other song -books for students,
soldiers, and sailors ; or, it may be, a folk song that
has never come into print. Sometimes, in the later
evening, the singing is not so beautiful. For here
those sing who never sang before, and those who used
to sing now sing the more. Perhaps only the broadest-
minded lover of grotesque contrasts will care for the
ballads jflung to the brightening moon among the
battlements and towers. But the others should not
200
JESUS COLLEGE
The romantic tower and lowering gateway of the
College are almost in the centre of the picture — a bit
of Exeter College appearing above the buildings to
the left.
Two masters are engaged in vigorous argument in
front of the Principal's door, over which is a "hood "
of the Georgian period, in quaint contrast with the
surrounding style of architecture.
The Oxford Day
judge harshly or with haste. These are but part of
the motley in which learning clothes itself. Much
sound and fury is here no proof of deep-seated folly ;
nor quietness, of study ; nor are a man's age, dignity,
and accomplishments in mathematical proportion to
the demureness of his deportment. I notice on one
little tankard these philosophies in brief, scrawled with
a broken pen : —
Ah ! who would lose thee,
When we no more can use or even abuse thee ?
nANTA PEL
^ui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.
The old is better.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.
MI2E0 MNAMONA SYMHOTAN
Assiduitate non desidia.
Too much study is sloth.
Desine fata deum flccti sperare precando.
Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensees.
And though some are evidently framed with an eye
confined to the tankard, how applicable all are to the
shining pewter and life itself !
You shall be in one small sitting-room, on an evening,
while in one corner a ditty from the Studentenlieder is
hummed ; in another, Hagen's Carmina Medii JSvi
or W. B. Yeats or Marlowe is declaimed ; in another,
20I
Oxford
you shall hear ghosts or sports discussed ; in a fourth,
the orthodoxy of the Inferno : yet the whole company
shall be one in spirit. And the same in another such
room — where a dozen men are divided into groups
around three of the number who are reading, for dis-
cussion, the rules of the Salvation Army, the Anthologia
Planudea^ and a Blue Book.
At the top of an adjacent staircase there is a lonely
gentleman eating strawberries and cream, and thinking
about wall-paper ; or one like a gnome, amidst in-
numerable books, — his floor strewn with notes, phrases,
queries, — writing a prize essay ; or one reading law, with
his newly-presented football cap on his head ; one read-
ing Kipling and training a meerschaum ; one alternately
reading the Organon of Aristotle and quoting verbatim
from Edgar Allen Poe to admiring workers at the same
text ; or one digesting opium, and now and then looking
for five minutes at one or other of a huge pile of books
at his side — Paul Verlaine, Marlowe, Jeremy Taylor, the
Odyssey^ Ariosto, and Pater. The staircases creak or
clatter with the footsteps of men going up and down, to
and from these rooms. Outside one or two sets of rooms
the great outer door — the "oak" — is fastened, a signal
that the owner wishes to be undisturbed, and practically
an invitation to trials of strength with heel and shoulder
from the passer-by. In the faintly lighted quadrangles,
men are hurrying, or sauntering, or resting on the grass
among the trees. Perhaps there is a light in the college
hall. The sound of a castanet dance played by a band
— or a song — comes through the window. The music
202
The Oxford Day
grows wilder. The chorus swallows up the song.
There are half a dozen conductors beating time, among
the crowded benches of the audience. The small lights
are but stains upon the air, which is composed of cigar
and cigarette smoke. Mirth is eloquently expressed in
every way, from laughter to a snore. The candles begin
to fall from the brackets ; the seats are carried out ; and,
to a still wilder tune, two hundred men join hands and
dance. The band is given no rest : in fact, they are
unable to rest, and the same glow sits in their cheeks.
But in the darkness they slip away. For all the candles
are out, and there is a bonfire making red weals upon the
grey walls ; then another dance ; and a hundred times,
" Auld lang syne," until the college is quiet, and but
rarely a light is seen through curtains and over battle-
ments : and the long Oxford night begins. Large
reponens^ we build up the fire. If it be autumn, we
will hardly permit it ever to go out, thus consoling our-
selves for the transitory glow of the sun, and fantastically
handing on the sunsets of many summers and the dawns of
many springs, in that constant flame. Sitting before it,
we seem to evolve a fiery myth, and think that Apollo
and Arthur and other " solar " heroes more probably
leapt radiant from just such a fire before the eyes of
more puissant dreamers in the old time. The light
creeps along the wall, fingering title after title of our
books. They are silently preluding to a second spring,
when poets shall sing instead of birds, and we shall gather
old fragrant flowers, not from groves, but from books.
We see coming a long, new summer, a bookish summer,
203
Oxford
when we shall rest by olive and holm oak and palm
and cypress, and not leave our chairs — a summer of
evenings, with tropic warmth, no cloud overhead, and
skies of what hue we please.
There many Minstrales maken melody,
To drive away the dull Melancholy,
And many Bardes, that to the trembling chord
Can tune their timely voices cunningly :
And many Chroniclers, that can record
Old loves and warres for Ladies doen by many a Lord.
A certain Italian poet used " to retire to bed for the
winter." He had some wisdom, and we will follow
him in spirit ; but, having Oxford rooms and Oxford
armchairs, that were not dreamed of in his philosophy,
we need not stay abed. Few of the costless luxuries are
dearer than the hour's sleep amidst the last chapter of
the night, while the fire is crumbling, grey, and mur-
murous, as if it talked in its sleep. The tenderest of
Oxford poets knew these nights : —
About the august and ancient Square
Cries the wild wind ; and through the air.
The blue night air, blows keen and chill ;
Else, all the night sleeps, all is still.
Now the lone Square is blind with gloom,
A cloudy moonlight plays, and falls
In glory upon Bodlfy^s walls :
Now, wildlier yet, while moonlight pales.
Storm the tumultuary gales.
O rare divinity of Night !
Season of undisturbed delight :
Glad interspace of day and day !
Without, an world of winds at play :
Within, I hear what dead friends say.
204
The Oxford Day
Blow, winds ! and round that perfect Dome
Wail as you will, and sweep, and roam :
Above Saint Mary' s carven home,
Struggle and smite to your desire
The sainted watchers on her spire :
Or in the distance vex your power
Upon mine own New College tower :
You hurt not these ! On me and mine
Clear candlelights in quiet shine :
My fire lives yet ! nor have I done
With Smollett^ nor with Richardson :
With, gentlest of the martyrs ! Lamb,
Whose lover I, long lover, am :
With Gray, where gracious spirit knew
The sorrows of arts lonely few ....
And it is day once more ; and beauty, the one thing
in Oxford that grows not old, seems a new-born, joyous
thing, to a late watcher who looks out and sees the
light first falling on dewy spires.
205
IN A COLLEGE GARDEN
CHAPTER VII
IN A COLLEGE GARDEN
In spring, when it rained, says Aubrey, Lord Bacon
used to go into the fields in an open coach, " to receive
the benefit of irrigation, which he was wont to say was
very wholesome because of the nitre in the aire, and
the universal spirit of the world," Nor is it difficult
in a college garden to associate the diverse ceremonial
of Nature with the moods and great days of men.
What, for example, can lay such fostering hands upon
the spirit that has grown callous in the undecipherable
sound of cities, as the grey February clouds that emerge
from the sky hardly more than the lines in mother-of-
pearl or the grain of a chestnut ? I have thought, — in
that garden, — that we are neglectful of the powers of
herb and flower to educate the soul, and that the
magical herbalists were nobly guessing at difficult truths
when they strove to find a "virtue " in every product
of lawn and sedge. There is a polarity between the
genius of certain places and certain temperaments ; our
" genial air " or natal atmosphere is, we may think,
enriched by the soul of innumerable plants, beyond the
209 14
Oxford
neighbourhood of which some people are never quite
themselves. And this college garden of smooth, shining
lawn, and trees that seem more than trees in their close
old friendship with grey masonry, has a singular aptness
to — I had almost said a singular knowledge of — those
who have first been aware of beauty in its shade. " If
there be aught in heredity, I must perforce love
gardens ; and until the topographer of Eden shall
arise, I have set my heart on this." So says a theo-
logian, one of its adornments in academic black and
white.
Old and storied as it is, the garden has a whole
volume of subtleties by which it avails itself of the
tricks of the elements. Nothing could be more
romantic than its grouping and contrasted lights when
a great, tawny September moon leans — as if pensively
at watch — upon the garden wall. No garden is so
fortunate in retaining its splendour when summer
brusquely departs, or so rich in the idiom of green
leaves when the dewy charities of the south wind are at
last accepted. None so happily assists the music and
laughter and lamps of some festivity. And when in
February the heavy rain bubbles at the foot of the
trees, and spins a shifting veil about their height and
over the grass, it seems to reveal more than it conceals.
The loneliness of the place becomes intense, as if one
were hidden far back in time, and one's self an anachron-
ism. It is a return to Nature. The whole becomes
primeval ; and it is hard to throw off the illusion of
being deep in woods and in some potent presence —
2IO
THE FELLOWS' GARDEN, MERTON
COLLEGE
The portion of this garden shown \s bounded by the
south-east portion of the old City Wall, with one or
two bastions still remaining, and the terrace walk
formed on a mound level with the top of the steps,
shown in the picture, commands a fine view of Christ
Church Meadows and the Broad Walk. A grand avenue
of lime trees is on the left, where at a lower level is
placed an armillary sphere.
The time is near sunset.
L'fe^- ■ -:?*?f
In a College Garden
Hoc nemus . . .
Quis deus iucertum est, habitat deus.
At such times the folded gloom gives up the tale of
the past most willingly.
The casual stranger sees little in the garden but
neatness and repose. He may notice how luckily the
few trees occur, and what warmth the shrubbery
bestows, when they are black with rain and the crocus
petals are spilt in silence. In a little while he may be
privileged to learn what a great space for the eye, and
especially for the imagination, the unknown gardener
has contrived out of a few roods of high-walled grass.
He will perhaps end by remarking that an acre is more
than so many square yards, and by supposing that it is
unique because it is academic.
But it is no merely academic charm that keeps him
there, whether the sun in October is so bright on the
frosty grass that the dead leaves disappear when they
fall, — or on a spring evening the great chestnut
expands ; its beauty and magnitude are as things newly
and triumphantly acquired ; and it fills the whole space
of sky, and in a few minutes the constellations hang in
its branches.
It is rather perfect than academic ; a garden of
which the most would say that, after their own, it is the
best. Its shape and size are accidents, for it embraces
the sites of an old hall, a graveyard, and an orchard of
Elizabeth's time ; and the expert mole might here and
there discover traces of a dozen successive fashions
since it was clipped and carved by a dialist and
211
Oxford
peppered with tulips. But a thoughtful conservatism
and a partnership between many generations have given
it an indubitable style. The place has, as it were, a
nationality, and the inevitable boundaries are apparently
the finishing-strokes of the picture and not its aboriginal
frame. Yet it is no natural garden into which any one
may stroll and scatter the ends of cigarettes. A strong
customary law is expressed by the very aspect of the
place. Hence, part of it is still sacred to the statelier
leisure of the dons. Hence, where any one can go,
whether by right, or from a lack of beadles, it is the
good fortune of every one to find himself alone when he
reaches the spot. Even so, the trees have never quite
their just tribute of dignity and ceremonial. They
would be pleased to welcome back the days when
Shenstone could only visit Jago secretly, because he
wore a servitor's gown ; when even Gibbon remembered
with satisfaction " the velvet cap and silk gown which
distinguish a gentleman commoner from a plebeian
student"; and when, within living memory, the
" correct thing for the quiet, gentlemanly under-
graduate was a black frock-coat and tall hat, with the
neatest of gloves and boots," on his country walk. The
garden, when its borders were in scrolls, knots, and
volutes, was certainly not among
The less ambitious Pleasures found
Beneath the Liceat of an humble Bob,
but was chiefly honoured by those who had graduated
into a grizzled wig " with feathery pride," — Mr. Rake-
212
In a College Garden
well of Queen's or Beau Trifle of Christ Church, or
the ornate gentleman who are depicted in Ackerman, —
and by dons who had never lost their self-respect by
the scandal of keeping the company of undergraduates.
When Latin was the language of conversation at dinner
and supper, the trees looked their best. The change
came, perhaps, in the days of the President who went
about the world muttering Mors omnibus communis, or
when our grandfathers made the gravel shriek with
their armchair races across the quadrangles ; for in
those days, according to an authority on roses, under-
graduates either read, or hunted, or drove, or rowed,
or walked (^i.e. up and down the High). The pile of
the lawn continued to deepen, and the trees to write
new legends upon the sky.
The limes are in number equal to the fellows of
the college, and, with the great warden horse-chestnut
and the lesser trees, make up a solemn and wise society.
They waste no time. Now and then they talk a little,
and when one talks, the others follow ; but as a rule
the wryneck or the jackdaw talks instead ; and with
them it seems to be near the end of the day, nothing
remaining save benedictus benedicat. In the angriest
gale and in the scarcely grass-moving air of twilight
the cypresses nod almost without sound. They are
sentinels, unarmed, powerful in their unknown watch-
word, solemn and important as negroes born in the
days of Haroun Alraschid. They say the last word on
calm. And so old goes there often, to remember
the great days of the college fifty years ago, and, looking
213
Oxford
priest-like with his natural tonsure and black long
gown, seems to worship some unpermitted graven image
among the shadows. When he is in the garden, the
intruder may see a complete piece of mediaeval Oxford ;
for the louvre, and the line of roofs, and the muUioned
windows are, from that point of view, as they were in
the founder's time.
At the feet of the trees are the flowers of the seasons
in their order. Here and there the precious dark earth
is visible, adding a charm to the pale green stems and
leaves and the splendid or thoughtful hues of blossom.
The flower borders and plots carve the turf into such a
shape that it seems a great quiet monster at rest. One
step ahead the grass is undivided, enamelled turf :
underfoot, the innumerable blades have each a colour, a
movement, a fragrance of their own, — as when one
enters a crowd, that had seemed merely a crowd, and
finds in it no two alike.
On one side is the shrubbery, of all the hues of the
kingdom of green. Underneath the shrubs the gloom
is a presence. The interlacing branches are as the
bars of its cage. You watch and watch — like children
who have found the lion's cage, but the lion invisible —
until gradually, pleased and still awed, you see that the
caged thing is — nothingness, in all its shadowy pomp
and immeasurable power. Seated there, you could
swear that the darkness was moving about, treading the
boundaries. When I first saw it, it was a thing as new
and strange as if I had seen the world before the sun,
and withdrawing my eyes and looking at the fresh limes
214
IN TRINITY COLLEGE GARDENS
The wrought-iron gates, supported by noble piers, to
the left of the picture, open immediately opposite
Wadham College. The road between the College and
the gates leads to the New Museum, the Parks, and
Keble College. There is no entrance for the public
through these gates.
Some of the fine trees which adorn this eastern part
of the gardens are shown.
In a College Garden
was like beholding the light of the first dawn arriving
at Eden. And in the evening that accumulated gloom
raised the whole question between silence and speech^
and did not answer it. The song of the blackbird is
heard, cushioned among the sleepy cooings of doves.
And when they cease, how fine is the silence ! When
they revive, how fine is the song ! For the silence
seems to appropriate and not to destroy the song. The
blackbird, too, seems to appropriate and make much
of the silence when he sings. The long meditations of
the gowned and ungowned therein are not of less
account because the only tangible result is the perfect
beheading of dandelions as they walk to and fro.
How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows ?
I only know that all we know comes from you,
And that you come from Eden on flying feet.
Is Eden far away, or do you hide
From human thought, as hares and mice and coneys
That run before the reaping-hook and lie
In the last ridge of the barley ? Do our woods
And winds and ponds cover more quiet woods.
More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds ?
Is Eden out of time and out of space ?
And do you gather about us when pale light
Shining on water and fallen among leaves,
And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathers.
And the green quiet, have uplifted the heart ?
Not often can the most academic dreamer see Faunus
among those trees or Daphne in the laurel again.
On the grass the shadows of the roof, and later, of
a tree, make time an alluring toy. The shadow is cut
in finer and sharper angles than the roofs make, in the
rich, hazy, Oxford light.
215
Oxford
To walk round about the garden twice could not
occupy an hour of the most tranquil or gouty human
life, even if you stayed to see the toadflaxes and ferns
in the wall, to note the shape of the trees, and admire
how the changing sun patronises space after space of
the college buildings. Yet no maze or boundless moor
could give a greater pleasure of seclusion and security.
Not in vain has it served many academic generations
as a sweet and melodious ante-chamber of the unseen.
For, as an old book grows the richer to the wise reader,
for the porings of its dead owners in past years, so
these trees and this lawn have been enriched. Their
roots are deep in more than earth. Their crests traffic
with more than the doves and the blue air. There is
surely no other garden so fit to accompany the reading
of Comus or the Mneid. They become domesticated
in the heart amidst these propitious shades. But not
many bring books under the trees ; nor are they unwise
who are contented to translate what silence says. The
many-coloured undergraduate lounges there with an-
other of his kind, and may perhaps encounter the shade
of some " buck " or " smart " of old, who will set a
stamp of antiquity on his glories. Choleric old
walks there sometimes ; but either a caterpillar falls, or
the leaves turn over and unburden themselves of their
rain ; and he comes back, loudly thinking that, if a
covered cloister had been in the place of the trees, he
would not have lost a very ingenious thread of reflec-
tion about the greatest good of the greatest number.
And goes there after a college meeting, and
216
FELLOWS' GARDEN, EXETER COLLEGE
On the extreme left of the picture is part of the two-
storeyed Library of the College, built in 1856. Farther
on is the south end of the lobby to the Divinity School
("Pig Market,"' see other picture), at the base of
which are some steps, leading to an earthen embank-
ment overlooking Radcliffe Square.
Bishop Heber"s tree is planted at the south-east
corner of this embankment (see other picture), and
shows between the aged acacia tree and the dome of
the Radcliffe Library, which appears to the extreme
right of the painting.
A group of Fellows are seated under the acacia,
probably resting after playing bowls.
In a College Garden
changes his mind. The merry breakfaster finds that a
turn among the trees will add the button-hole to his
complacency. The grave young scholar, with his gown
almost to his heels, and the older one whose gown and
cap resemble nothing that is worn by any save a tramp,
meet there on summer evenings. The freshman gives
the highest colour and purest atmosphere to his prophetic
imaginings when he walks there first. One says that
the garden is partly a confessor and partly an aunt.
Above all, it is the resort of those who are about to
leave Oxford for ever ; and under its influence those
who have forgotten all their ambitions, and those who
are beginning to remember them, meet on some June
or October afternoon, to decide that it has been worth
while ; and between the trees the college has a half-
domestic, half-monastic air ; all else is quite shut out,
except where, like a curve of smoke, a dome rises, and
the wraith of a spire among the clouds.
217
OLD OXFORD DAYS
CHAPTER VIII
OLD OXFORD DAYS
The history of a college like New or Wadham is
written clearly on its walls. It rose by one grand
effort, from one grand conception, at the will of founder
and architect. All its future uses were more or less
plainly implied in the quadrangles, chapel, and hall,
through which the opening procession marched with
solemn music ; they stood in need of little more than
time and good fortune. Such a college was then in a
sense mature, fully armed and equipped, before the
founder's decease.
But it was more characteristic of an Oxford college
to be evolved irregularly, by strange and difficult ways,
with much sudden expansion and decline, into its present
state. Thus Lincoln and Oriel were, for a short time
after their foundation, fallow, if not extinct. The
latter, in spite of its renovation by a king, after
whom it was at first inclined to be named, grew
up around the humble, illustrious tenement of La
Oriole, where its early scholars dwelt, and whence
they gave their society its lasting name. That
221
Oxford
cradling tenement has its parallel in many a college
history.
In the thirteenth or fourteenth century some Oxford
citizen would build a pair of cottages, where a carpenter
and an innkeeper came to live. At the inrush of
students to welcome a famous lecturer, the spare rooms
of those cottages received their share. Some of the
lodgers stayed on, liked the carpenter and his wife and
family, with whom they lived on terms of social equality;
and in a generation the tradition of entertaining scholars
was established. A few years saw the formation of a
colony of students from one countryside or great estate.
As the custom was, they chose a superior from among
their number. In those days, if an American had run
upstairs to the head, he might have had a more satis-
factory answer than he had yesterday to his command :
" I've come to take rooms in your college ! " for the
hostel was, roughly speaking, an hotel. The members
fought side by side in the battles of the nations (viz.
Northerners, Southerners, etc.), and of town and gown.
They bent over the same books. They sang the same
songs. And together they came to love the place, the
two cottages and those adjacent into which they had
overflowed. Such a group fled from the ancient Brase-
nose Hall to Stamford, in one of the University migra-
tions, in 1334 ; carried with them the knocker of their
lodgings in the shape of a brazen nose, and fixed it to
the door of their " Brasenose Hall in Stamford." If
they forgot to take it back on their return, it neverthe-
less "got perched upon the top of the pineal gland " of
222
Old Oxford Days
the college brain ; and with characteristic spirited piety
the descendants of the old hall-men found it out in
1890, and hung it in a place of honour and safety.
In later life one of the carpenter's tenants became a
bishop, or a royal almoner. Either at the height of
his fame and wealth, or on his deathbed, he would
remember his old retreat, and its associations with law
and Aristotle and
Breed and chese and good ale in a jubbe.
There his old friends or their successors still dwelt,
and learned and taught and fought. So he gave money
for the purchase of the cottages ; a neighbouring garden
plot, perhaps a strip of woodland outside the walls, and
the rents of some home farms for the revenue ; together
with the advowson of a church — if possible the one
which he remembered best in Oxford, or if not, then
one within his diocese or influence. He sketched the
statutes, which fixed the number of the scholars and
the rules for electing new ones and a head. He
himself chose the first head. The scholars were to
remain unmarried and in residence ; to study the Arts,
or Theology, or Canon and Civil Law ; and to pray
for his soul.
The carpenter's and innkeeper's tenants found
themselves suddenly powerful and rich. They had
their own seal, and a new and more settled enthusiasm,
and a diapason of duties and ceremonies, added to their
life. They had their aisle in the church whose shadow
reached them on summer evenings. If their estates were
223
Oxford
large and well managed, — if the country was prosperous,
and the head obeyed the statutes and the fellows the head,
— their progress was swift. Perhaps a legal difficulty
interposed delay, or their rents disappeared. Perhaps
the fellows quarrelled with the head, or the discipline
was such that the fellows climbed into college at late
unstatutable hours and became a scandal in the University.
But a descendant or neighbour of the founder, or a
parishioner of the college living, came to their help.
One gave a present, in order that he might be re-
membered in the college prayers : another sent books :
a former fellow who was grateful or pitiful made a
rich benefaction when he went to court. Already the
little original tenements were tottering or too small.
They must build and rebuild. Then a "second founder "
adopted as his children that and all succeeding generations
of scholars, who should praise him for a benefaction
larger than the first.
They pull down the old buildings, all save a flanking
wall with a gateway to their taste, and begin to build.
The benefactor sends teams of oxen to carry wood and
stone. They are quarrying at Eynsham and Headington,
and in the benefactor's own distant county. They are
felling oaks at Cumnor or Nuneham, actually before the
bronzed foliage has crisped to brown. All day the oxen
come and go : on the river, the boats are carrying
stone, slates, and wood, unless the frost binds the barges
among the reeds and the foundation soil breaks the
spade. The master mason has already roughly hewn
a statue of the patron saint or the founder, or his
224
THE LIBRARY, ORIEL COLLEGE
Across the picture, opposite the spectator, appears the
Library, a dignified building of the Ionic order of
architecture, designed by James Wyatt about 1788.
It occupies the northern side of the inner quadrangle.
On the ground floor, in the rusticated " basement "
upon which the Library stands, are the Common
Rooms of the College.
The time is late afternoon in summer.
Old Oxford Days
rebus and coat of arms. He has decided that the old
doorway shall be the entrance to the college kitchen,
lying far back in the main quadrangle, which will not
only take in the site of the demolished buildings, but
the neighbouring garden and a lane that could be spared.
If he is unfortunate, he may have to stop when he has
completed only the entrance, with the head's lodgings
vigilant above it, and a few sets of rooms adjacent on
either side, already occupied. If all is well, in a few
years, or perhaps at the end of the mason's life, the
shining whole is the admiration of Oxford. The bishop
who is to consecrate the chapel comes informally to see
it a few days beforehand, and is therefore able to
restrain his wonder when he comes pompously with the
chancellor and all the great names of the University.
The chapel and hall face the entrance. All round are
the dwelling rooms, on two storeys, if we count the
long-untenanted attics. On one side alone there is twice
the space of the old cottages ; but the arrangement is
the same — the rooms branching on the left and right
from a staircase that rises from ground to attic. The
library is on a first floor : on one side of it, the
windows invite the earliest light.
Whan that the belle of laudes gan to rynge
And freres in the chauncel gonne synge ;
on the other, they enable the late student, who cannot
buy light, to read until the martins cast no shadow as
they pass in June : and there they put the gorgeous
Latin poets and missals, embroidered with colours like
225 15
Oxford
the bank of a brook, and along with them the dull
works of a benefactor, in that very corner where the
spider loves them to-day. The fellow who loves sleep
will not choose the eastward-facing, library side of the
quad. But they have made it almost impossible for
him to oversleep himself. For in a humbler truckle-
bed a younger scholar sleeps near him. Some rooms
contain three beds side by side. Leading out of this
dormitory are little cupboards or studies, sometimes
under lock and key, for solitary work. Most of the
walls are ungarnished ; a few are hung with coloured
cloth or even frescoed. The furniture is simple and
scanty. The hall itself has but a " green hanging of
say," a high table for the seniors, and two pairs of
forms and tables on trestles for the juniors. The kitchen
is more opulent, with its tall andirons, chopping-board,
trivet, gridiron, spit, and great pot and chafer of brass,
its pans, dishes, and platters ; while in the buttery
there are four barrels abroach. Now and then an old
member or admirer of the society sends a group of
silver vessels : the most honoured becomes the loving
cup that circulates on gaudy days ; and with it goes
some significant toast, as the^^j- suum cuique at Magdalen
accompanies the " Restoration cup," on which the names
of James II. 's ejected fellows are engraved. For while
the college grows, and sends its just proportion of astute
or learned men into the world, it flowers with customs
and traditions — prayers in the chapel, festivals in the
hall, — the Christmas boar's head decorated with banners
at Queen's, — the ancestral vine at Lincoln, At dinner
226
MAGDALEN COLLEGE TOWER FROM
THE MEADOWS
To the left of the picture appear those noble black
poplars of which Oxford is justly proud. The College
tower is seen between them and another group of
trees, Magdalen Bridge and the elms in the " Grove "
finishing to the extreme right.
The time is late afternoon.
Old Oxford Days
the tables shine with flagons and tankards, and great
" sprig salts " of silver plate, which were the main college
investment, the pledges of affection, or, as at Wadham,
the customary gift of those who were admitted to the
dignity of the high table. The shining of most was
put out for ever in Charles I.'s melting-pot at New
Inn Hall ; and only the lists survive, each tankard and
ewer and candlestick described by its donor's name.
Thus, by the fact of their coming from neighbour
villages and towns, perhaps also from one school, to a
home on which they depended for their learning and
the necessities of life, the fellows and scholars became
knit together, with noticeable characteristics and
peculiarities — almost a family resemblance ; and in
religious or political difficulties they made a solid
strength of opinion and influence. A little heresy
might break out under Henry the Eighth or Mary.
A great benefaction might encourage the building of
another quadrangle or a new library, and the institution
of more fellowships and scholarships. They contri-
buted a handsome quantity of plate to the king, and an
officer to his army ; or, to a man, resisted the Puritan
intrusion after his death. Such were the more con-
spicuous events of centuries. The conflicts in the
University, according to some proverbial Latin verses,
were in early times at least as important as the boat
race to-day. They were a subtle measure of the state
of parties and movements ; and in these the college
played its part. And when the days of fighting were
over, there was the University lampoon : " These
227
Oxford
paltry scholars," says an old ballad, supposed to be
addressed by an Oxford alderman to the Duke of
Monmouth, —
These paltry scholars, blast them with one breath,
Or they'll rhime your Grace and us to death.
The college was busy in sending out into the world of
Church and State its more vigorous members — those who
excelled in the age when examinations were disputations
that sometimes became almost a form of athletic sport ;
and in keeping within its walls the quieter spirits, who
were willing to spend a life among manuscripts, in
perfecting the management of the college estates, or in
the education and discipline of others. From a scholar-
ship to a fellowship, and from a fellowship to a college
living, were frequently made the very calmest windings
to a happy decent age, though no doubt the last stage
sometimes led to such a regret as this : —
Why did I sell my College Life
(He cries) for Benefice and Wife ?
Return, ye Days ! when endless Pleasure
I found in Reading or in Leisure !
When calm around the Common Room
I pufF'd my daily Pipe's Perfume !
Rode for a stomach, and inspected,
At Annual Bottlings, corks selected :
And din'd untax'd, untroubled, under
The Portrait of our pious Founder !
It was a fine thing to sit day after day, in rooms
sweetened, as in Burton's day, with juniper, or in the
college library, which was as a bay or river mouth
leading into the very land of silence — to sit and write,
or not write, as you pleased ; and, in the days when
228
Old Oxford Days
books were no longer shelved with their faces to the
wall, look up at
Bullarium
Cherubini
printed in gold upon the glowing calf, and making
mystical combinations as night came on. There, and
in hall, chapel, study, and garden, men doomed to very
diverse fates and stations went and still go, and found it
possible to live a more enchanted life than anywhere else.
The refractory Headington stone crumbled, and
while the classical buildings became yearly less hand-
some than when the masons left them, the Gothic
gained by the rich inlay and delicate waste of weather
and time. As if time and weather wrote the chronicles
of the society, the walls came to have a singular
influence upon each generation, and gave them, as it
were, a common ancestry and blood — noble blood, for
all. Even when they departed they had the irrefragable
right of exiles to look back and salute.
And yet how difi^erent the life within those walls
which some now living can remember ! Sixty years
ago, they lament, " no man was ever seen in the streets
of Oxford after lunch without being dressed as he
would have been in Pall Mall." Charles Reade at
Magdalen " created a panic even among the junior
members " by wearing a green coat and brass buttons,
as Dean of Arts. Sixty years before that, George
Colman had matriculated in a grass-green coat, " with
the furiously bepowdered pate of an ultra coxcomb."
And now, says the first-quoted authority, " shooting-
229
Oxford
jackets of all patterns, in which it is not given to every
man to look like a gentleman," have taken the place of
frock-coat, tall hat, and gloves, " in which every one
looked well." The change from knee-breeches to
trousers early last century was made possible by the
gross lenience of a proctor.
Without college or university games, the old
Oxford day was very much unlike our own. Bonfires
of celebration, almost alone among modern amusements,
are of great antiquity, in street and quad. A hundred
years ago the man who would now row or play cricket
for his college, was hunting, or pole-jumping across
the fields ; or, if he was original, he took the long
walks which were popular a few generations ago, but
are now so exceptional that I know nobody who ever
saw, and recognised, Matthew Arnold's tree, though
some are lazily inclined to believe that it is the one elm
that dwells with the seven firs on Cumnor Hurst.
One of the few college games was confined to the
fives courts, which lay within the walls and have long
disappeared, and are inconceivable to-day, when com-
petition and spectators on ground remote from the
colleges are characteristic of Oxford sport. Earlier
still, a form of college game was the " vile and horrid
sport " of forcibly shaving those who were about to
become Masters of Arts, and the " tucking " {i.e. scratch-
ing on the chin with the thumb nail) of freshmen,
which the first Earl of Shaftesbury put down at Exeter.
These customs cast but a feeble shadow to-day in the
occasional solemnity of trimming a contemporary's
230
Old Oxford Days
exuberant or ill-kept hair. A more appropriate form
of celebrating the taking of degrees was an elaborate
supper, which is now less often possible, when a man
frequently takes his degree in solitude and leaves
Oxford immediately. William Paston, in the fifteenth
century, writes, that he was made bachelor on a Friday
and had his feast on the Monday following. He was
promised a gift of venison, and though disappointed,
his guests "were pleased with such meat as they had."
Even William of Wykeham, who forbade every possible
game to his scholars at New, and would not allow the
post-prandial leisure to be spent on ordinary days
around the fire in the middle of his great hall, provided
that, after supper, '' on festivals and other winter
nights, on which, in honour of God, his Mother, or
some other saint," there is a fire in the hall, the
fellows might indulge in singing or reading " poems,
chronicles of the realm, and the wonders of the world."
Some of the college halls preserved their old central
fireplaces, under a louvre, until early in the last century.
While the fellows dined, a servitor stood there, and
read aloud from the Bible, in the first days of the
college; or, as at Trinity in 1792, recited a passage
from Homer or Virgil or Milton. Southey records it
as a rule, that every member of the University could
go by right once a year to Balliol hall, and " be treated
with bread and cheese and beer, and all on condition
that, when called upon, he should either sing a song
or tell a story." Those who were unqualified doubt-
less stayed away. Yet there is little sign that the
231
Oxford
temperate or secluded undergraduate suffered for his gifts.
Whitefield himself, who cost his relatives ^24 for his
first three years, and wore " woollen gloves, a patched
gown, and dirty shoes," says that the other men left
him alone when " he became better than other people,"
as a " singular odd fellow," at Pembroke. There was,
however, one custom which must have left such men
with a sore memory. For the " fresh night " was long
the common doom of men soon after entering the
University. There were fires of charcoal in the hall
on All Saints' eve. All Saints' day and night, and
onwards to Christmas day and Candlemas day ; and
the freshmen were brought in before an assembly of
their seniors among the undergraduates. Anthony a
Wood describes the ordeal thus : —
" On Candlemas day, or before, every freshman had
warning given him to provide his speech, to be spoken
in the public hall before the undergraduates and ser-
vants on Shrove Tuesday night that followed, being
always the time for the observation of that ceremony.
" Feb. 15, 164^, Shrove Tuesday, the fire being made
in the common hall before five of the clock at night, the
fellows would go to supper before six, and making an
end sooner than at other times, they left the hall to the
liberty of the undergraduates, but with an admonition
from one of the fellows (who was then principal of the
undergraduates and postmasters [at Merton]) that all
things should be carried in good order. While they
were at supper in the hall, the cook (Will Noble) was
making the lesser of the brass pots full of cawdel at the
232
THE CLOISTERS, NEW COLLEGE
The great west window of the College Chapel shows
above the Cloisters to the east. The window was
painted from designs made by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
To the right of the drawing is the picturesque group
of the Warden's Lodgings.
The area of the Cloisters was consecrated as a
private burial-place for the College, 19th October,
1400.
Old Oxford Days
freshmen's charge ; which, after the hall was free from
the fellows, was brought up and set before the fire in
the said hall. Afterwards every freshman, according
to seniority, was to pluck off his gown and band, and
if possible make himself look like a scoundrel. This
done, they were conducted each after the other to the
high table, and there made to stand on a form placed
thereon : from whence they were to speak their speech
with an audible voice to the company ; which if well
done, the person that spoke it was to have a cup of
caudle and no salted drink ; if indifferently, some
caudle and some salted drink ; but if dull, nothing was
given to him but salted drink, or salt put in college
beer, with tucks to boot. Afterwards when they were
to be admitted into the fraternity, the senior cook was
to administer to them an oath over an old shoe. After
which, spoken with gravity, the freshman kissed the
shoe, put on his gown and band, and took his place
among the seniors."
Wood himself not only earned pure caudle, but sack
as well, with an oration in this vein : —
" Most reverend Seniors, — May it please your
Gravities to admit into your presence a kitten of the
Muses, and a meer frog of Helicon to croak the
cataracts of his plumbeous cerebrosity before your
sagacious ingenuities. I am none of the University
blood-hounds that seek for preferment, and whose
noses are as acute as their ears, that lie perdue for
places, and who, good saints ! do groan till the Visita-
tion comes. These are they that esteem a tavern as
Oxford
bad as purgatory, and wine more superstitious than
holy water ; and therefore I hope this honourable
convocation will not suffer one of that tribe to taste of
the sack, lest they should be troubled with a vertigo
and their heads turn rounds
Except at such a special season as that, the old
Oxford day bore more resemblance than our own to
the life elsewhere. The fashions in cards and dress
were the same as in London ; the outdoor amusements
were those of other town or country gentlemen. There
was horse-racing at Spurton Hill and Brackley, cock-
fighting at Holywell. Edgeworth's contemporaries
attended the assizes, and interfered on behalf of justice,
in spite of sheriff and judge. Anthony a Wood went
to fish at Wheatley Bridge, and " nutted at Shotover
by the way." And early rising was a tradition in every
college until last century. The undergraduate, who
to-day lives on historical principles, is often later than
his sixteenth-century original was to dine, when he sits
at his breakfast of steak and XX in a fine old room.
Chapel at six o'clock and a lecture at seven was a
common doom. Shelley and Hogg, after their days
spent in shooting at a mark, and making ducks and
drakes and paper boats at a Shotover pond, sat up,
indeed, until two, over their conversations on literature
and chemistry, but rose at seven, because it was custom-
ary. While dinner was at ten or eleven, breakfast was
an informal meal. Some attempted to do without it :
hence a morning preacher swooned on the altar steps.
Wood speaks of the juniors " at breakfast in hall " in
234
Old Oxford Days
1 66 1. The majority took beer and bread from the
buttery, and probably taking it in one another's rooms,
started the genial custom of breakfast parties, which
was perfected early in the nineteenth century. " Let
the tender swain," says the well-spiced Oxford Sausage,
a mid-eighteenth-century product of Oxford (and Cam-
bridge) wits, —
Let the tender Swain
Each Morn regale on nerve-relaxing Tea,
Companion meet of languor-loving Nymph :
Be mine each Morn with eager appetite
And Hunger undissembled, to repair
To friendly Buttery; there on smoaking Crust
And foaming Ale to banquet unrestrained,
Material Breakfast ! Thus in ancient Days
Our ancestors robust with liberal cups
Usher'd the Morn, unlike the squeamish Sons
Of modern Times : Nor ever had the Might
Of Britons brave decay'd, had thus they fed,
With British Ale improving British worth.
The institution of breakfast, whatever happened to
British worth, was certainly helped forward by the tea,
rolls, and toast which slowly ousted ale. Lectures and
disputations in private or in the Schools followed
breakfast. The latter possibly encouraged inter-
collegiate sports, since Exeter and Christ Church on
one occasion resolved their disputation into a fight
which attracted Masters of Arts. And well it might ;
for otherwise they were in danger of dining like fighting
cocks and amusing themselves like doves : the sixteenth-
century fellows of Corpus, for example, were permitted
no games but ball in the college garden. Examinations
are still a select and expensive form of amusement.
^2S
Oxford
The stories told of celebrated men and their viva voce
conflicts with examiners, and the like, have inspired
more than one to go into the Schools in a mood of
smiling irreverence. The fame resulting, it is true,
has to be propagated by much anecdote from the lips
of the hero himself. In the Middle Ages the humour
was of a lustier kind. The parsley crown went, or
should have gone, to the most brazen giver and taker
of learned wit. In Anthony a Wood's day, one William
George, " cynical and hirsute in his behaviour," was a
noted sophister and disputant, and improved his purse
by preparing the exercises of the dull or lazy for public
recitation. The nature of these examinations, in their
dull old age, has been recorded by one who took part : —
" Two boys, or men, as they call themselves, agree
to do generals together. The first stage in this mighty
work is to produce arguments. These are always
handed down from generation to generation, on long
slips of paper, and consist of foolish syllogisms on
foolish subjects. The next step is to go for a lice at to
one of the petty ofiicers, called the Regent Master of
the Schools, who subscribes his name to the questions,
and receives sixpence as his fee. When the important
day arrives, the two doubty disputants go into a large
dusty room, full of dirt and cobwebs, with walls and
wainscot decorated with the names of former disputants,
who, to divert the tedious hours, cut out their names
with their penknives or wrote verses with a pencil.
Here they sit in mean desks, opposite to each other,
from one till three. Not once in a hundred times does
236
Old Oxford Days
any officer enter ; and if he does, he hears one syllogism
or two, and then makes a bow, and departs, as he came
and remained, in solemn silence. The disputants then
return to the amusement of cutting the desks, carving
their names, or reading Sterne's Sentimental Journey, or
some other edifying novel."
Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century,
" great progress is made towards the wished-for honour
of a bachelor's degree " ; the goal might be reached, if
the undergraduate knew a few "jolly young Masters of
Arts," by answering questions concerning the pedigree
of a race-horse. Such was the lack of interest in the
disputations that they were called " wall " lectures, after
the name of their principal auditor.
A little poaching gave a very attractive substitute
for cross-country running. But increasing college
discipline and the heightening average of wealth and
birth among students cut off the more violent sports of
the Middle Ages, The unattached, poor Welsh and
Irish students, who kept up the University name for
rough and adventurous relaxations, disappeared before
the Reformation ; and after the Poor Law Act of 1531
had condemned begging scholars, who were not author-
ised under the seal of a university, to be treated as
able-bodied beggars, there can have been few to poach
at Shotover and Abingdon. The masked Mohock
revels and Jacobite struttings of the Augustan age were
a poor alternative. The blithe and fearless spirit of
trespassing, so common among undergraduates, is the
sole survival to-day, if we exclude the pious uprooting
237
Oxford
of stakes and fences on fields supposed (by reference to
Doomsday Book) to be common land. Before and
after the Puritans, who preferred music in their rooms,
there was free access to the acting of dramas in Latin
and English, and earlier still, to the miracle plays of
Herod and Noah and the like. Even during the
Commonwealth private theatricals were popular ; and
Wood speaks of one John Glendall, a fellow of Brase-
nose, who was the witty terr>£ filius in 1658, when the
Acts were kept in St. Mary's Church, as " a great
mimick, and acted well in several plays which the
scholars acted by stealth in Kettle Hall, the refectory
at Gloster Hall," etc.
For centuries the ale-houses were full of university
life. At one time there were three hundred in Oxford.
They had excellent uses before a common room per-
fected the homeliness of the college ; and even after-
wards, in the eighteenth century, a poetical club met at
" The Tuns " to display their wit. There the under-
graduates freshened and shared their wit, before each
had an ample sitting-room, and before the junior
common room, — where now the newspaper rustles, and
the debate roars or chirps, and the senior scholar, on
rare occasions, speaks to a not wholly reverent college
meeting from the time-honoured elevation of the
mantelpiece. The men of Balliol continued the old-
fashioned devotion to the "Split Crow" in Broad Street
long after the coffee-house had become fashionable.
The vice-chancellor, being president of the rival and
neighbouring society of Trinity, scoffed at the Master's
238
BROAD STREET, LOOKING WEST
On the left of the picture is the enclosing wall of the
Sheldonian Theatre, with its startlingly picturesque
thermes. A flight of semicircular steps leads to an
entrance between two of them.
In the first bay of the wall, seen through the
palisade fence, is the old Ashmolean Museum, and
farther on is a glimpse of Exeter College. The spire
is that of the College Chapel.
By the large tree standing near the Church of St.
Mary Magdalen are the buildings of Balliol College,
and nearer to the spectator is the entrance to Trinity
College and Kettle Hall.
Some of the houses to the right of the picture are
fair specimens of eighteenth-century domestic archi-
tecture.
Two or three bicycles are shown, and the time is
early noon.
Old Oxford Days
attempt to discourage them ; " so now they may be sots
by authority." The disorder was winked at because it
increased the " natural stupidity " of the Balliol men
of the day. But the attitude of the University towards
humour two centuries ago was a wily mixture of
patronage and ferocity. The terra filius was only not
official in his reckless bombardment of order and
authority at the annual University Act. It was as
though a jackdaw should be invited to church. He
and his companion (for they hunted in couples) were
chosen, as regularly as proctors, by election ; and to
become terr^e filius must have been the blue riband of
the wilder sort of University wits. Year after year
pairs of terr^e filii fired their random shots at great and
small, always with audacity, sometimes with the utmost
scurrility ; and year after year one or both of the pair
suffered expulsion, or, like Addison's father, public
humiliation, for their scandalous and opprobrious words,
which no doubt earned the gratitude of irresponsible
juniors.
It was long a common recreation, a recreation only,
to go on the river in a boat, and to row or be rowed
to some place of meditation or festivity, or to go with
music and wine upon the Isis to Godstow Bridge or
Sandford —
And there
Beckley provides accustom'd fare
Of eels, and perch, and brown beefsteak.
And the mention of Sandford carries with it many
memories for modern Oxford men, even if perch is
239
Oxford
not always to be had — of winter afternoons when the
mulled port was as sweet as a carnation, and a voice
from a slowly-gliding barge was the sole sound in all
the land. One joyous company long ago went, " like
country fiddlers," to Farringdon fair, with cithern, bass
viol, and violin. The city itself offered other amuse-
ments than the theatre, music hall, billiard tables, and
picture shows of to-day. Freaks, monstrosities, mounte-
banks, jugglers, were welcome not only to undergraduates
of fifteen or sixteen. There was " a brazen head that
could speak and answer " at the Fleur de Lace on one
day ; on another, strange beasts. On May-day a
maypole stood near St. Peter's-in-the-East and opposite
the " Mitre." A bear-baiting was always a possibility.
There was a fencing school at hand. One who cared
for none of these has left this account of his Oxford
day in the seventeenth century : —
Morn, mend hose, stu. Greek, breakfast, Austen, quoque dinner ;
Afternoon, wa. me., era. nu., take a cup, quoque supper —
i.e., interprets Wood, in the morning he mended his
stockings, studied Greek, took breakfast, studied St.
Augustine, and dined ; and in the afternoon, walked
in Christ Church meadows, cracked nuts, took a drink,
and had supper.
Above all, in and after the time of Cromwell the
city provided coffee-houses, — the real, steaming, smok-
ing, witty thing. The hospitality and spirit of careless
intercourse between college and college which they
fostered belong to the present day. They were first
opened, too, at a time when much of mediaeval life was
240
THE HIGH STREET LOOKING EAST
The Mitre Inn is on the left of the picture, and above
the white building rises the tower and lantern of All
Saints' Church. A part of these buildings has been
removed for the extension of Brasenose College.
Farther on, the spire of the University Church appears
above the porch of All Saints', and a portion of the
battlements of All Souls' College closes the per-
spective.
Old Oxford Days
departing, when Christmas sports were dying, and Latin
conversation at dinner and supper was going out of
use ; and Anthony a Wood laments that scholar-like
conversation (" viz. by quoting the fathers, producing
an antient verse from the poets suitable to his dis-
course " ) was accounted pedantic, and " nothing but
news and the affairs of Christendom," he says scornfully,
" is discoursed of, and that generally at coffee-houses."
At some, perhaps at all of them, there was a light
library, which apparently resembled the library of a
modern college barge. A copy of Rabelais, with poems
and plays, all chained in the old manner, embellished
Short's coffee-house. Later came the Taller s and
Spectators and Connoisseurs, for " such as have
neglected or lost their Latin or Greek," as Tom Warton
said : —
" As there are here books suited to every Taste, so
there are liquors adapted to every species of reading.
Amorous tales may be perused over Arrack punch and
jellies ; insipid odes over orgeat or capilaire ; politics
over coffee ; divinity over port ; and defences of bad
generals and bad ministers over whipt syllabubs. In a
word, in these libraries instruction and pleasure go hand
in hand ; and we may pronounce, in a literal sense,
that learning remains no longer a dry pursuit." And
in Gibbon's day the dons changed their seats from
chapel to hall, and from common room to coffee-house,
in an indolent circle ; and not only dons, but the
infinite variety of University types in the distinguishing
raiment of that day —
241 16
Oxford
Such nice distinction one perceives
In cut of gown, and hoods and sleeves,
Marking degrees, or style, or station,
Of Members free, or on foundation,
That were old Cato here narrator
He must perforce have nomenclator.
There, or at an ale-house, which appears to have been
less exposed to a proctorial raid, the sociable spent the
Oxford evening, which grew longer as the nineteenth
century approached. Sunday evenings were frequently
devoted to the fair sex in Merton walks, which were
always gay.
My hair in wires exact and nice,
I'll trim my cap to smallest size,
That Polly sure may see me,
exclaims an eighteenth-century spark, with a hint that
the kindly relations between town and gown sometimes
reached the married state. Yet another writer with an
€ye for the amusing side of Oxford life drew the
following picture, which a diligent seeker might, with
difficulty, parallel to-day. Gainlove and Ape-all, two
Oxford undergraduates, are talking : —
" Gainlove. What, bound for the Port of Wedlock,
Sir .?
" Ape-all. No, no, no, no. Sir ; I only use her as a
Pleasure boat to dabble about the stream with, purely
for a Passo Tempo, or so. O Lord, Sir, I have been
at London, and know more of the world than to make
love to a woman I intend to marry — only it diverts the
spleen to talk to a girl sometimes, you know — and 'tis
such a comedy, when one gallants them to college, to
242
THE BOTANIC GARDEN
The Garden is surrountied by a wall, commenced in
1632, pierced by several noble gateways one of which
shows to the left of the picture.
The entrance gateway fronting the High Street was
designeil by Inigo Jones.
The Garden is a favourite promenade and spot for
rest ; Magdalen Tower is seen to great advantage
through its grand trees.
Old Oxford Days
see all the young Fellows froze with envy, stand centinel
in their niches, like the figures of the Kings round the
Royal Exchange. And the old Dons who would take
no more notice of one at another time than a bishop of
a country curate, will come cringing, cap in hand, to
offer to show the ladies the curiosities of the College —
when the duce knows they only want to be nibbling."
Those who liked not these things had at least as
good an opportunity of quiet work as to-day. A
separate set of rooms for each member of a college had
gradually become almost universal in the eighteenth
century ; and the great outer door or " oak " shut off
those who wished from the rest of the world. Shelley
was so pleased with that impervious door that he
exclaimed : the oak " is surely the tree of knowledge ! "
The simplicity of the quarters within, before much of
undergraduate social life was passed in their rooms,
would astonish modern eyes, if we may judge from
contemporary cuts, that show a few chairs, a small
table with central leg, a cap and gown on the wall, an
inkhorn hanging by the window, a pair of bellows and
tongs by the fire, and over the mantel-piece a picture
or mirror. But there the undergraduate was safe from
duns " with vocal heel thrice thundering at the gate,"
and, let us hope, from dons, in colleges where they came
round at nine in the evening, to see that he kept good
hours. Dibdin tells us that, as he closed the
Curiosities of Literature^ he saw the Gothic battle-
ments outside his window " streaked with the dapple
light of morning." Ten years later, in the first year
243
Oxford
of the nineteenth century, Reginald Heber, then at
Brasenose, looked out from his window and saw the
fellows of All Souls' thundering the " All Souls'
Mallard " song —
Griffin, Turkey, Bustard, Capon
Let other hungry mortalls gape on.
And on their bones with stomachs fall hard.
But let All Souls men have the Mallard.
Hough the blood of King Edward, by ye blood of King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard —
carrying torches and inspired with canary as they sang.
No one appears to have heard the song again. And
with that sound old Oxford life died away.
244
THE OXFORD COUNTRY
CHAPTER IX
THE OXFORD COUNTRY
Lxdssimus umbra.
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towera.
The walls of Oxford are tufted with ivy-leaved toad-
flax, wallflower, and the sunny plant which botanists
call " inelegant ragwort." They form a trail from the
villages, upon wall after wall, into Ship Street and
Queen's Lane, by which the country may be traced.
In the same way, the city may be said to steal out into
the fields. Not only do we read the epitaph of a
forgotten fellow in a quiet church, and mark a resem-
blance to Merton or Lincoln in the windows of an old
house in North Hinksey Street, but the beauty of the
windy Shotover plateau, with its slopes of hyacinth and
furze, and the elmy hills of Cumnor and Radbrook, are
haunted and peopled by visions of the distant spires.
They give that mild, well-sculptured country a soul.
Even when the city is out of sight, its neighbourhood
is not to be put by. Everywhere it is a suspected
presence, a hidden melodist. Whether in memory or
anticipation, it is, on all our walks, " like some grave
thought threading a mighty dream."
247
Oxford
I could wish that an inexorable Five Mile Act had
kept it clear of red brick. Newman and Ruskin hinted
at the same. I know not how to describe the spirit
which turns a few miles of peaceful southern country
into something so unique. But if I mention a wood or
a stream, let the reader paint in, as it were, something
sweet and shadowy in the distance, with his imagination
or recollection ; let it be as some subtle perfume in a
pot pourri which makes it different from all others.
There is a beautiful, sloping acre, not far from
Oxford, which a number of great elms divide into aisles
and nave, while at one end a curving hawthorn and
maple hedge completes them with an apse. Towards
Oxford, the space is almost shut in by remote elms.
On one side I hear the soft and sibilant fall of soaking
grass before the scythe. The rain and sun alternating
are like two lovers in dialogue ; the rain smiles from
the hills when the sun shines, and the sun also while the
rain is falling. When the rain is not over and the sun
has interrupted, the nightingale sings, where the stitch-
wort is starry amidst long grass that bathes the sweep-
ing branches of thorn and brier ; and I am now stabbed,
and now caressed, by its changing song. Through the
elms on either side, hot, rank grasses rise, crowned with
a vapour of parsley flowers. A white steam from the
soil faintly mists the grass at intervals. The grass and
elms seem to be suffering in the rain, suffering for their
quietness and solitude, to be longing for something, as
perhaps Eden also dropped " some natural tears " when
left a void. A potent, warm, and not quite soothing
248
OXFORD, FROM SOUTH HINKSEY
Elms and willow trees fringe the slope of the hills
leading to the valley, in which the city shows sparkling
in the morning sunlight.
Commencing from the west or left side of the
picture, we see the tower and lantern of All Saints',
with the dome of the Radcliffe Library telling dark
against the sky j then come the University Church
of St. Mary, Tom Tower, and the stretch of buildings
of Christ Church, with the Great Hall of the College,
the Cathedral spire finishing the group.
Merton Tower stands detached to the east.
The almost level line of the horizon, with the trees
bordering the river to IfBey, frame as beautiful a group
of buildings as any to be seen in England.
Farm sheds show under the willow trees to the
left.
The time is the early morning of a summer day.
The Oxford Country-
perfume creeps over the grass, and makes the May
blossom something elvish. I turn and look east.
Almost at once, all these things are happily composed
into one pleasant sense, and are but a frame to a tower
and three spires of Oxford, like clouds — but the sky is
suddenly cloudless.
I suppose that ivy has the same graceful ways on all
old masonry, yet I have caught myself remembering, as
if it were unique, that perfect ancient ivy that makes an
arcade of green along the wall of Godstow nunnery.
And in the same way, above all others I remember the
pollard willows that lean this way and that along the
Oxford streams — like prehistoric sculpture in winter,
but in summer a green wave and full of voices. Never
have I seen sunsets like those which make Wytham
Wood and Marley Wood great purple clouds, and the
clouds overhead more solid than they. How pleasant
are Cherwell and Evenlode, and those angry little
waters at Ferry Hinksey ! When I see the rain a white
cloud and Shotover Hill a grey cloud, I seem never
before to have seen the sweetness of rain. October is
nowhere so much itself as among the Hinksey elms,
when the fallen leaves smell of tea (and who that loves
tea and autumn will cast a stone ?). The trees, whether
they stand alone or in societies, are most perfect in
autumn. Something in the soil or climate preserves
their farewell hues as in a protracted sunset. Looking
at them at nightfall, it is hard to believe that they have
been amidst ten thousand sunsets and remained the
same ; for they ponder great matters, and not only in
249
Oxford
the autumn, but in May, when the silence is startled
by the gurgling laughter of the hen cuckoo. When
spring comes into the land, I remember a mulberry
that suspended its white blossom, among black boughs,
over a shining lawn at the edge of the city ; and the
bells that in March or April seemed to be in league
with spring, as we heard them from the fields. And
how well a conversation would grow and blossom
between Headington and Wheatley or Osney and
Eaton ! Some that loved not the country would flourish
strangely in wisdom or folly as the roads rose or fell,
or as the grey oak stems of Bagley Wood began to
make a mist around us. The only incidents, in twenty
miles, were the occasional sprints of one who was
devoted to a liver, or the cometary passing of one on a
bicycle that sang Le Roi cTIvetot as if it were a psalm
containing the whole duty of man. And how a book
— even a "schools" book, — taken on the river or the
hills, would yield a great sweetness to alternate hand-
lings and laughter of several companions ; or, if it
were a dull book, might be made to yield more than its
author ever meant. I have ever thought that the
churchyard with a broken cross at Hinksey, and the
willows below and the elms above, if one takes George
Herbert there, is a better argument for the Church than
Jewel and Chilli ngworth, if the old yew had not seemed
the priest of some old superstition still powerful.
No one can walk much in the Oxford country without
becoming a Pantheist. The influence of the city, the
memories, the books he is fresh from, help the indolent
250
OXFORD FROM HEADINGTOK HILL
The elm trees of the " Grove " of Magdalen College
show to the extreme left of the picture. The buildings
of the College do not appear.
To the right of the " Grove "' are the two spires
of the Cathedral and the University Church of St.
Mary, with the Radcliffe dome and the "Schools"
tower farther on.
The view is looking west, at sunset in corn harvest.
The Oxford Country
walker, who is content to sit under a hedge and wait
for the best things, to make his gods. The Janes are
peopled with no fairies such as in Wales and Ireland
nimbly feed the fantasy, which here, in consequence, is
apt to take flight in wonderful ways. I remember one
(and Ovid was not at all in his mind) who was all but
confident that he saw Persephone on flat pastures and
red ploughlands, gleaming between green trees, when
the hawthorn was not yet over and the roses had begun,
and the sapphire dragon-fly was afloat, on the Cherwell,
as the boat made a cool sound among the river's hair,
betwixt Water Eaton and Islip. On the quiet, misty,
autumn mornings, the hum of threshing machines was
solemn ; and there at least it was a true harmony of
autumn, and the man casting sheaves from the rick
was exalted —
Neque ilium
Flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo.
Everywhere the fancy, unaided by earlier fancies, sets
to work very busily in these fields. I have on several
afternoons gone some way towards the beginning or
a new mythology, which might in a thousand years
puzzle the Germans. The shadowy, half-apprehended
faces of new deities float before my eyes, and I have
wondered whether Apollo and Diana are not immortal
presences wheresoever there are awful trees and alter-
nating spaces of cool or sunlit lawn. ... In the lanes
there seems to be another religion for the night.
There is a fitful wind, and so slow that as we walk we
251
Oxford
can follow its path while it shakes the heavy leaves and
dewy grass ; and we feel as if we were trespassing on holy
ground ; the land seems to have changed masters, or
rather to have One. Often I saw a clean-limbed beech,
pale and slender, yet firm in its loftiness, that shook
delicately arched branches at the top, and below held
out an arm on which a form of schoolboys might have
sat, — rising out of fine grass and printing its perfect
outlines on the sky, — and I could fancy it enjoyed a
life of pleasure that was health, beauty that was strength,
thought that was repose.
The Oxford country is rich in footpaths, as any one
will know that goes the round from Folly Bridge,
through South Hinksey, to the " Fox " at Boar's Hill
(where the scent of wallflower and hawthorn comes in
through the window with the sound of the rain and the
nightingale) ; and then away, skirting Wootton and
Cumnor, past the " Bear " (with its cool flagged room
looking on a field of gold, and Cumnor Church tower
among elms) ; and back over the Hurst, where he
turns, under the seven firs and solitary elm, to ponder
the long, alluring view towards Stanton Harcourt and
Bablock Hythe. He may take that walk many times,
or wish to take it, and yet never touch the same foot-
paths ; and never be sure of the waste patch of blue-
bell and furze, haunted by linnet and whinchat ; the
newly harrowed field, where the stones shine like ivory
after rain ; the green lane, where the beech leaves lie in
February, and rise out of the snow, untouched by it,
in polished amber ; the orchard, where the grass is
252
The Oxford Country
gloomy in April with the shadow of bright cherry-
flowers.
One such footpath I remember, that could be seen
falling among woods and rising over hills, faint and
winding, and disappearing at last, — like a vision of the
perfect quiet life. We started once along it, over one
of the many fair little Oxford bridges, one that cleared
the stream in three graceful leaps of arching stone.
The hills were cloudy with woods in the heat. On
either hand, at long distances apart, lay little grey
houses under scalloped capes of thatch, and here and
there white houses, like children of that sweet land —
albi circum ubera nati. For the most part we saw only
the great hawthorn hedge, which gave us the sense of a
companion always abreast of us, yet always cool and
fresh as if just setting out. It was cooler when a red-
hot bicyclist passed by. A sombre river, noiselessly
sauntering seaward, far away dropped with a murmur,
among leaves, into a pool. That sound alone made
tremble the glassy dome of silence that extended miles
on miles. All things were lightly powdered with gold,
by a lustre that seemed to have been sifted through
gauze. The hazy sky, striving to be blue, was reflected
as purple in the waters. There, too, sunken and
motionless, lay amber willow leaves ; some floated
down. Between the sailing leaves, against the false
sky, hung the willow shadows, — shadows of willows
overhead, with waving foliage, like the train of a bird
of paradise. Everywhere the languid perfumes of
corruption. Brown leaves laid their fingers on the
Oxford
cheek as they fell ; and here and there the hoary
reverse of a willow leaf gleamed in the crannied bases
of the trees. A plough, planted in mid-field, was
curved like the wings of a bird alighting.
We could not walk as slowly as the river flowed ;
yet that seemed the true pace to move in life, and so
reach the great grey sea. Hand in hand with the
river wound the path, until twilight began to drive her
dusky flocks across the west, and a light wind knitted
the aspen branches against a silver sky with a crescent
moon, as, troubled tenderly by autumnal maladies of
soul, we came to our place of rest, — a grey, immemorial
house with innumerable windows.
254
IN PRAISE OF OXFORD
CHAPTER X
IN PRAISE OF OXFORD
Many have written in praise of Oxford, and so finely
that I have made this selection with difficulty. I have
excluded the work of living men, because I am not
familiar with it. Among that which is included will be
found passages from the writings of one who was at both
Universities, John Lyly ; of two who were at Cambridge
only, Dryden and Wordsworth ; of two who were at
neither, Hazlitt and Hawthorne ; and of several
brilliant lovers of Oxford whose faith was filial and
undivided. Almost all the quotations have wit or
beauty enough to defend them, even had they been less
apposite : their charm is redoubled in this place, since
they are in Oxford's praise. They are worthy of a
city which a learned German compares with the crea-
tions of Poussin and Claude. But they are in no need
of compliment. I could only wish that I had put down
nothing unworthy of their blessing. I have ; and so
they stand in place of epilogue, where they perform the
not unprecedented duty of apology.
257 17
Oxford
" There are also in this Islande two famous Universi-
ties, the one Oxford^ the other Cambridge^ both for the
profession of all sciences, for Divinitie, phisicke, Lawe,
and for all kinde of learning, excelling all the Universi-
ties of Christendome.
*' I was myself in either of them, and like them both
so well, that I meane not in the way of controversie to
preferre any for the better in Englande, but both for
the best in the world, saving this, that Colledges in
Oxenford are much stately for the building, and Cam-
bridge much more sumptuous for the houses in the
towne, but the learning neither lyeth in the free stones
of the one, nor the fine streates of the other, for out of
them both do dayly proceede men of great wisdome, to
rule in the common welth, of learning to instruct the
Common people, of all singuler kinde of professions to
do good to all. And let this suffice, not to enquire
which of them is the superior, but that neither of them
have their equall, neither to ask which of them is the
most auncient, but whether any other bee so famous."
John Lyly.
*' Where the Cherwell flows along with the Isis, and
their divided streams make several little sweet and
pleasant islands, is seated on a rising vale the most
famous University of Oxford, in Saxon Oxenford, our
most noble Athens, the seat of the English Muses, the
prop and pillar, nay the sun, the eye, the very soul of
the nation : the most celebrated fountain of wisdom
and learning, from whence Religion, Letters and Good
258
In Praise of Oxford
Manners, are happily diffused thro' the whole King-
dom. A delicate and most beautiful city, whether we
respect the neatness of private buildings, or the stateli-
ness of public structures, or the healthy and pleasant
situation. For the plain on which it stands is walled
in, as it were, with hills of wood, which keeping out on
one side the pestilential south wind, on the other, the
tempestuous west, admit only the purifying east, and
the north that disperses all unwholesome vapours.
From which delightful situation. Authors tell us it was
heretofore call'd Bellositum." — Camden.
Ye sacred Nurseries of blooming Youtli !
In whose collegiate shelter England's Flowers
Expand, enjoying through their vernal hours
The air of liberty, the light of truth ;
Much have ye suffered from Time's gnawing tooth :
Yet, O ye spires of Oxford ! domes and towers !
Gardens and groves ! your presence overpowers
The soberness of reason ; till, in sooth,
Transformed, and rushing on a bold exchange
I slight my own beloved Cam, to range
Where silver Isis leads my stripling feet ;
Pace the long avenue, or glide adown
The stream-like windings of that glorious street —
An eager Novice robed in fluttering gown !
Wordsworth.
" King James, 1 605, when he came to our University
of Oxford, and, amongst other edifices, now went to
view that famous Library, renewed by Sir Thomas
Bodley, in imitation of Alexander, at his departure
brake out into that noble speech. If I were not a
King, I would be an University man ; and if it were
259
Oxford
so that 1 must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish,
1 would desire to have no other prison than that
Library, and to be chained together with so many good
Authors et mortuis magistris. So sweet is the delight
of study, the more learning they have (as he that hath
a Dropsy, the more he drinks the thirstier he is), the
more they covet to learn, and the last day is -prions
discipulus ; harsh at first learning is, radices amar^^
but fructus dulces^ according to that of Isocrates, pleasant
at last ; the longer they live, the more they are
enamoured of the Muses. Heinsius, the keeper of
the Library at Leyden in Holland, was mewed up in
it all the year long ; and that which to my thinking
should have bred a loathing caused in him a greater
liking. / no sooner (saith he) come into the Library^
but I bolt the door to me^ excluding lust^ ambition^ avarice^
and all such vices^ whose nurse is idleness^ the mother of
ignorance ^ and Melancholy herself ; in the very lap of
eternity^ amongst so many divine souls^ I take my seat^
with so lofty a spirit and sweet content^ that I pity all
our great ones^ and rich men that know not this happiness T
The Anatomy of Melancholy.
But by the sacred genius of this place,
By every Muse, by each domestic grace,
Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well,
And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.
Our poets hither for adoption come.
As nations sued to be made free of Rome :
Not in the sufFragating tribes to stand.
But in your utmost, last, provincial band.
If his ambition may those hopes pursue.
Who with religion loves your arts and you,
260
THE OLD ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM AND
SHELDONIAN THEATRE
The Olil Ashmolean Museum, with its noble entrance,
stands to the left of the picture j on the right side is
part of the south front of the Sheldonian Theatre.
An entrance to the enclosure from Broad Street is
seen between the thermes and a part of the north
side of the street.
The collection of the Old Ashmolean Museum is
removed to the Taylor Institution.
In Praise of Oxford
Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,
Than his own mother university.
Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age.
Dryden.
" Rome has been called the ' Sacred City ' — might not
our Oxford be called so too } There is an air about it,
resonant of joy and hope : it speaks with a thousand
tongues to the heart : it weaves its mighty shadow over
the imagination : it stands in lowly sublimity, on the
' hill of ages,' and points with prophetic fingers to
the sky : it greets the eager gaze from afar, ' with
glistening spires and pinnacles adorned,' that shine
with an eternal light as with the lustre of setting suns ;
and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the
spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes,
are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory :
its streets are paved with the names of learning that
can never wear out : its green quadrangles breathe the
silence of thought, conscious of the weight of yearnings
innumerable after the past, of loftiest aspirations for the
future : Isis babbles of the Muse, its waters are from
the springs of Helicon, its Christ Church meadows,
classic, Elysian fields ! — We could pass our lives in
Oxford without having or wanting any other idea —
that of the place is enough. We imbibe the air of
thought ; we stand in the presence of learning. We
are admitted into the Temple of Fame, we feel that we
are in the Sanctuary, on holy ground, and ' hold high
converse with the mighty dead,' The enlightened and
261
Oxford
the ignorant are on a level, if they have but faith in the
tutelary genius of the place. We may be wise by
proxy, and studious by prescription. Time has taken
upon himself the labour of thinking ; and accumulated
libraries leave us leisure to be dull. There is no
occasion to examine the buildings, the churches, the
colleges, by the rules of architecture, to reckon up the
streets to compare it with Cambridge (Cambridge lies
out of the way, on one side of the world) — but woe to
him who does not feel in passing through Oxford that
he is in ' no mean city,' that he is surrounded with the
monuments and lordly mansions of the mind of man,
outvying in pomp and splendour the courts and palaces
of princes, rising like an exhalation in the night of
ignorance, and triumphing over barbaric foes, saying,
' All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me ! '
— as the shrine where successive ages came to pay their
pious vows, and slake the sacred thirst of knowledge,
where youthful hopes (an endless flight) soared to truth
and good, and where the retired and lonely student
brooded over the historic, or over fancy's page, im-
posing high tasks for himself, framing high destinies
for the race of man — the lamp, the mine, the well-head
whence the spark of learning was kindled, its stream
flowed, its treasures were spread out through the
remotest corners of the land and to distant nations.
Let him who is fond of indulging a dream-like exist-
ence go to Oxford, and stay there ; let him study this
magnificent spectacle, the same under all aspects, with
the mental twilight tempering the glare of noon, or
262
In Praise of Oxford
mellowing the silver moonlight ; let him not catch the
din of scholars or teachers, or dine or sup with them,
or speak a word to any of its privileged inhabitants ;
for if he does, the spell will be broken, the poetry and
the religion gone, and the palace of enchantment will
melt from his embrace into thin air ! "
Hazlitt.
" Oxford . . . must remain its own sole expression ;
and those whose sad fortune it may be never to behold
it have no better resource than to dream about grey,
weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices, wrought with
quaint Gothic ornament, and standing around grassy
quadrangles, where cloistered walks have echoed to the
quiet footsteps of twenty generations, — lawns and
gardens of luxurious repose, shadowed with canopies of
foliage, and lit up with sunny glimpses through arch-
ways of great boughs, — spires, towers, and turrets, each
with its history and legend, — dimly magnificent chapels,
with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly
diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest
gloom, — vast college halls, high -windowed, oaken-
panelled, and hung around with portraits of the men
in every age whom the University has nurtured to be
illustrious, — long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the
wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved, —
kitchens (we throw in this feature by way of ballast,
and because it would not be English Oxford without
its beef and beer) with huge fireplaces, capable of
roasting a hundred joints at once, — and cavernous
263
Oxford
cellars, where rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and
fume with that mighty malt-liquor which is the true
milk of Alma Mater : make all these things vivid in
your dream, and you will never know nor believe how
inadequate is the result to represent even the merest
outside of Oxford." — Hawthorne,
*' Beautiful city ! so venerable, so lovely, so un-
ravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so
serene !
There are our young barbarians, all at play !
And yet steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her
gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her
towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who
will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps
ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to
the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, which is
only truth seen from another side ? — nearer, perhaps,
than all the science of Tubingen, Adorable dreamer,
whose heart has been so romantic ! who hast given
thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to
heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines ! home
of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular
names, and impossible loyalties ! whose example could
ever so inspire us to keep down the Philistine in our-
selves, what teacher could ever so save us from that
bondage to which we are all so prone, that bondage
which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of
Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise (and nobly
did Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of
264
In Praise of Oxford
sight behind him — the bondage of Was uns alle b'dndigt^
DAS GEMEiNE! She wiU forgive me, even if I have
unwittingly drawn upon her a shot or two aimed
at her unworthy son ; for she is generous, and the
cause in which I fight is, after all, hers. Apparitions
of a day, what is our puny warfare against the
Philistines, compared with the warfare which this queen
of romance has been waging against them for centuries,
and will wage after we are gone ? "
Matthew Arnold.
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