EARLY DAYS AT OXFORD
It had been settled that my edition of the Rig-veda should be printed
at the Oxford University Press, and I found that I had often to go
there to superintend the printing. Not that the printers required much
supervision, as I must say that the printing at the University Press
was, and is, excellent—far better than anything I had known in
Germany. In providing copy for a work of six volumes, each of about
1000 pages, it was but natural that _lapsus calami_ should occur from
time to time. What surprised me was that several of these were
corrected in the proof-sheets sent to me. At last I asked whether
there was any Sanskrit scholar at Oxford who revised my proof-sheets
before they were returned. I was told there was not, but that the
queries were made by the printer himself. That printer was an
extraordinary man. His right arm was slightly paralysed, and he had
therefore been put on difficult slow work, such as Sanskrit. There are
more than 300 types which a printer must know in composing Sanskrit.
Many of the letters in Sanskrit are incompatible, i. e. they cannot
follow each other, or if they do, they have to be modified. Every
_d_, for instance, if followed by a _t_, is changed to _t_; every _dh_
loses its aspiration, becomes likewise _t_, or changes the next _t_
into _dh_. Thus from _budh_ + _ta_, we have _Buddha_, i. e. awakened.
In writing I had sometimes neglected these modifications, but in the
proof-sheets these cases were always either queried or corrected. When
I asked the printer, who did not of course know a word of Sanskrit,
how he came to make these corrections, he said: “Well, sir, my arm
gets into a regular swing from one compartment of types to another,
and there are certain movements that never occur. So if I suddenly
have to take up types which entail a new movement, I feel it, and I
put a query.” An English printer might possibly be startled in the
same way if in English he had to take up an _s_ immediately following
an _h_. But it was certainly extraordinary that an unusual movement of
the muscles of the paralysed arm should have led to the discovery of a
mistake in writing Sanskrit. In spite of the extreme accuracy of my
printer, however, I saw, that after all it would be better for myself,
and for the Veda, if I were on the spot, and I decided to migrate from
London to Oxford.
My first visit had filled me with enthusiasm for the beautiful old
town, which I regarded as an ideal home for a student. Besides, I
found that I was getting too gay in London, and in order to be able to
devote my evenings to society, I had to get up and begin work soon
after five. May, therefore, saw me established for the first time in
Oxford, in a small room in Walton Street. The moving of my books and
papers from London did not take long. At that time my library could
still be accommodated in my portmanteau, it had not yet risen to
12,000 volumes, threatening to drive me out of my house. A happy time
it was when I possessed no books which I had not read, and no one sent
books to me which I did not want, and yet had to find a place for in
my rooms, and to thank the author for his kindness.
I at once found that my work went on more rapidly at Oxford than in
London, though if I had expected to escape from all hospitality I
certainly was not allowed to do that. Accustomed as I was to the
Spartan diet of a German _convictorium_, or a dinner at the Palais
Royal _à deux francs_, the dinners to which I was invited by some of
the Fellows in Hall, or in Common Room, surprised me not a little. The
old plate, the old furniture, and the whole style of living, impressed
me deeply, particularly the after-dinner railway, an ingenious
invention for lightening the trouble of the guests who took wine in
Common Room. There was a small railway fixed before the fireplace, and
on it a wagon containing the bottles went backwards and forwards,
halting before every guest till he had helped himself. That railway, I
am afraid, is gone now; and what is more serious, the pleasant, chatty
evenings spent in Common Room are likewise a thing of the past.
Married Fellows, if they dine in Hall, return home after dinner, and
junior Fellows go to their books or pupils. In my early Oxford days, a
married Fellow would have sounded like a solecism. The story goes that
married Fellows were not entirely unknown, and that you could hold
even a fellowship, if you could hold your tongue. Young people,
however, who did not possess that gift of silence, had often to wait
till they were fifty, before a college living fell vacant, and the
quinquagenarian Fellow became a young husband and a young vicar.
What impressed me, however, even more than the great hospitality of
Oxford, was the real friendliness shown to an unknown German scholar.
After all, I had done very little as yet, but the kind words which
Bunsen and Dr. Prichard had spoken about me at the meeting of the
British Association, had evidently produced an impression in my favour
far beyond what I deserved. I must have seemed a very strange bird,
such as had never before built his nest at Oxford. I was very young,
but I looked even younger than I was, and my knowledge of the manners
of society, particularly of English society, was really nil. Few
people knew what I was working at. Some had a kind of vague impression
that I had discovered a very old religion, older than the Jewish and
the Christian, which contained the key to many of the mysteries that
had puzzled the ancient, nay, even the modern world. Frequently, when
I was walking through the streets of Oxford, I observed how people
stared at me, and seemed to whisper some information about me.
Tradespeople did not always trust me, though I never owed a penny to
anybody; when I wanted money I could always make it by going on faster
with printing the Rig-veda, for which I received four pounds a sheet.
This seemed to me then a large sum, though many a sheet took me at
first more than a week to get ready, copy, collate, understand, and
finally print. If I was interested in any other subject, my exchequer
suffered accordingly—but I could always retrieve my losses by sitting
up late at night. Poor as I was, I never had any cares about money,
and when I once began to write in English for English journals, I had
really more than I wanted. My first article in the _Edinburgh Review_
appeared in October, 1851.
At that time the idea of settling at Oxford, of remaining in this
academic paradise, never entered my head. I was here to print my
Rig-veda and work at the Bodleian; that I should in a few years be an
M.A. of Christ Church, a Fellow of the most exclusive of colleges,
nay, a married Fellow—a being not even invented then—and a professor
of the University, never entered into my wildest dreams. I could only
admire, and admire with all my heart. Everything seemed perfect, the
gardens, the walks in the neighbourhood, the colleges, and most of all
the inhabitants of the colleges, both Fellows and undergraduates. My
ideas were still so purely continental that I could not understand
how the University could do such a thing as incorporate a foreign
scholar—could, in fact, govern itself without a Minister of Education
to appoint professors, without a Royal Commissioner to look after the
undergraduates and their moral and political sentiments. And here at
Oxford I was told that the Government did not know Oxford, nor Oxford
the Government, that the only ruling power consisted in the Statutes
of the University, that professors and tutors were perfectly free so
long as they conformed to these statutes, and that certainly no
minister could ever appoint or dismiss a professor, except the Regius
professors. “If we want a thing done,” my friends used to explain to
me, “we do it ourselves, as long as it does not run counter to the
statutes.”
But Oxford changes with every generation. It is always growing old,
but it is always growing young again. There was an old Oxford four
hundred years ago, and there was an old Oxford fifty years ago. To a
man who is taking his M.A. degree, Oxford, as it was when he was a
freshman, seems quite a thing of the past. By the public at large no
place is supposed to be so conservative, so unchanging, nay, so
stubborn in resisting new ideas, as Oxford; and yet people who knew it
forty or fifty years ago, like myself, find it now so changed that,
when they look back they can hardly believe it is the same place. Even
architecturally the streets of the University have changed, and here
not always for the better. Architects unfortunately object to mere
imitation of the old Oxford style of building; they want to produce
something entirely their own, which may be very good by itself, but is
not always in harmony with the general tone of the college buildings.
I still remember the outcry against the Taylor Institution, the only
Palladian building at Oxford, and yet everybody has now grown
reconciled to it, and even Ruskin lectured in it, which he would not
have done, if he had disapproved of its architecture. He would never
lecture in the Indian Institute, and wrote me a letter sadly reproving
me for causing Broad Street to be defaced by such a building, when I
had had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was very loud in his
condemnation of other new buildings. He abused even the New Museum,
though he had a great deal to do with it himself. He had hoped that it
would be the architecture of the future, but he confessed after a time
that he was not satisfied with the result.
In his days we still had the old Magdalen Bridge, the Bodleian
unrestored, and no trams. Ruskin was so offended by the new bridge, by
the restored Bodleian, and by the tram-cars, that he would go ever so
far round to avoid these eyesores, when he had to deliver his
lectures; and that was by no means an easy pilgrimage. There was, of
course, no use in arguing with him. Most people like the new Magdalen
Bridge because it agrees better with the width of High Street; they
consider the Bodleian well restored, particularly now that the new
stone is gradually toning down to the colour of the old walls, and as
to tram-cars, objectionable as they are in many respects, they
certainly offend the eye less than the old dirty and rickety
omnibuses. The new buildings of Merton, in the style of a London
police-station, offended him deeply, and with more justice,
particularly as he had to live next door to them when he had rooms at
Corpus.
These new buildings could not be helped at Oxford. The stone, with
which most of the old colleges were built, was taken from a quarry
close to Oxford, and began to peel off and to crumble in a very
curious manner. Artists like these chequered walls, and by moonlight
they are certainly picturesque, but the colleges had to think of what
was safe. My own college, All Souls, has ever so many pinnacles, and
we kept an architect on purpose to watch which of them were unsafe and
had to be restored or replaced by new ones. Every one of these
pinnacles cost us about fifty pounds, and at every one of our meetings
we were told that so many pinnacles had been tested, and wanted
repairing or replacing. Many years ago, when I was spending the whole
Long Vacation at Oxford, I could watch from my windows a man who was
supposed to be testing the strength of these pinnacles. He was armed
with a large crowbar, which he ran with all his might against the
unfortunate pinnacle. I doubt whether the walls of any Roman castellum
could have resisted such a ram. I spoke to some of the Fellows, and
when the builder made his next report to us, we rather objected to the
large number of invalids. He was not to be silenced, however, so
easily, but told us with a very grave countenance that he could not
take the responsibility, as a pinnacle might fall any day on our
Warden when he went to chapel. This, he thought, would settle the
matter. But no, it made no impression whatever on the junior Fellows,
and the number of annual cripples was certainly very much reduced in
consequence.
It is true that Oxford has always loved what is old better than what
is new, and has resisted most innovations to the very last. A
well-known liberal statesman used to say that when any measure of
reform was before Parliament, he always rejoiced to see an Oxford
petition against it, for that measure was sure to be carried very
soon. It should not be forgotten, however, that there always has been
a liberal minority at Oxford. It is still mentioned as something quite
antediluvian, that Oxford, that is the Hebdomadal Council, petitioned
against the Great Western Railway invading its sacred precincts; but
it is equally true that not many years later it petitioned for a
branch line to keep the University in touch with the rest of the
world.
Many things, of course, have been changed, and are changing every year
before our very eyes; but what can never be changed, in spite of some
recent atrocities in brick and mortar, is the natural beauty of its
gardens, and the historical character of its architecture. Whether
Friar Bacon, as far back as the thirteenth century, admired the
colleges, chapels, and gardens of Oxford, we do not know; and even if
we did, few of them could have been the same as those which we admire
to-day. We must not forget that Greene’s _Honourable History of Friar
Bacon_ does not give us a picture of what Oxford was when seen by that
famous philosopher, who is sometimes claimed as a Fellow of Brasenose
College, probably long before that College existed; but what is said
in that play in praise of the University, may at least be taken as a
recollection of what Greene saw himself, when he took his degree as
Bachelor of Arts in 1578. In his play of the _History of Friar Bacon_,
Greene introduces the Emperor of Germany, Henry II, 1212-50, as paying
a visit to Henry III of England, 1216-73, and he puts into his mouth
the following lines, which, though they cannot compare with Shelley’s
or Mat Arnold’s, are at all events the earliest testimony to the
natural attractions of Oxford. Anyhow, Shelley’s and Mat Arnold’s
lines are well known and are always quoted, so that I venture to quote
Greene’s lines, not for the sake of their beauty, but simply because
they are probably known to very few of my readers:
“Trust me, Plantagenet, these Oxford schools
Are richly seated near the river-side:
The mountains full of fat and fallow deer,
The battling[10] pastures lade with kine and flocks,
The town gorgeous with high built colleges,
And scholars seemly in their grave attire.”
[10] Will it be believed that the battels (bills) in College
are connected with this word?
The mountains round Oxford we must accept as a bold poetical licence,
whether they were meant for Headington Hill or Wytham Woods. The
German traveller, Hentzner, who described Oxford in 1598, is more true
to nature when he speaks of the wooded hills that encompass the plain
in which Oxford lies.
But while the natural beauty of Oxford has always been admired and
praised by strangers, the doctors and professors of the old University
have not always fared so well at the hands of English and foreign
critics. I shall not quote from Giordano Bruno, who visited England in
1583-5, and calls Oxford “the widow of true science[11],” but Milton
surely cannot be suspected of any prejudice against Oxford. Yet he
writes in 1656 in a letter to Richard Jones: “There is indeed plenty
of amenity and salubrity in the place when you are there. There are
books enough for the needs of a University: if only the amenity of the
spot contributed so much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does
to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the
place.”
[11] _Opere_, ed. Wagner, i. p. 179.
These ill-natured remarks about the Oxford Dons seem to go on to the
very beginning of our century. The buildings and gardens are praised,
but by way of contrast, it would seem, or from some kind of jealousy,
their inhabitants are always treated with ridicule. Not long ago a
book was published, _Memoirs of a Highland Lady_. Though published in
1898, it should be remembered that the memoirs go back as far as 1809.
Nor should it be forgotten that at that time the authoress was hardly
more than thirteen years of age, and certainly of a very girlish, not
to say frivolous, disposition. She stayed some time with the then
Master of University, Dr. Griffith, and for him, it must be said, she
always shows a certain respect. But no one else at Oxford is spared.
She arrived there at the time of Lord Grenville’s installation as
Chancellor of the University. Though so young, she was taken to the
Theatre, and this is her description of what she saw and heard:—“It
was a shock to me; I had expected to be charmed with a play, instead
of being nearly set to sleep by discourses in Latin from a pulpit.
There were some purple, and some gold, some robes and some wigs, a
great crowd, and some stir at times, while a deal of humdrum speaking
and dumb show was followed by the noisy demonstrations of the
students, as they applauded or condemned the honours bestowed; but in
the main I tired of the heat and the mob, and the worry of these
mornings, and so, depend upon it, did poor Lord Grenville, who sat up
in the chair of state among the dignitaries, like the Grand Lama in
his temple guarded by his priests.” One thing only she was delighted
with, that was the singing of Catalani at one of the concerts. Yet
even here she cannot repress her remark that she sang “Gott safe the
King.” She evidently was a flippant young lady or child, and with her
sister, who afterwards joined her at Oxford, seems to have found
herself quite a fish out of water in the grave society of the
University.
The room in the Master’s Lodge which appalled her most and seems to
have been used as a kind of schoolroom, was the Library, full of
Divinity books, but without curtains, carpet, or fireplace. Here they
had lessons in music, drawing, arithmetic, history, geography, and
French. “And the Master,” she adds, “opened to us what had been till
then a sealed book, the New Testament, so that this visit to Oxford
proved really one of the fortunate chances of my life.”
This speaks well for the young lady, who in later life seems to have
occupied a most honoured and influential position in Scotch society.
But Oxford society evidently found no favour in her eyes.
Her uncle and aunt, as she tells us, were frequently out at dinner
with other Heads of Houses, for there was, of course, no other
society. These dinners seem to have been very sumptuous, though their
own domestic life was certainly very simple. For breakfast they had
tea, and butter on their bread, and at dinner a small glass of ale,
college home-brewed ale. “How fat we got!” she exclaims. The Master
seems to have been a man of refined taste, fond of drawing, and what
was called poker-painting; he was given also to caricaturing, and
writing of squibs. The two young ladies were evidently fond of his
society, but of the other Oxford society she only mentions the
ultra-Tory politics, and the stupidity and frivolity of the Heads of
Houses. “The various Heads,” she writes, “with their respective wives,
were extremely inferior to my uncle and aunt. More than half of the
Doctors of Divinity were of humble origin, the sons of small gentry or
country clergy, or even of a lower grade. Many of these, constant to
the loves of their youth, brought ladies of inferior manners to grace
what appeared to them so dignified a station. It was not a good style;
there was little talent, and less polish, and no sort of knowledge of
the world. And yet the ignorance of this class was less offensive than
the assumption of another, when a lady of high degree had fallen in
love with her brother’s tutor, and got him handsomely provided for in
the Church, that she might excuse herself for marrying him. Of the
lesser clergy, there were young witty ones—odious; young learned
ones—bores; and elderly ones—pompous; all, however, of all grades,
kind and hospitable. But the Christian pastor, humble, gentle,
considerate, and self-sacrificing, had no representative, as far as I
could see, among these dealers in old wines, rich dinners, fine china,
and massive plate.”
“The religion of Oxford appeared in those days to consist in honouring
the King and his Ministers, and in perpetually popping in and out of
chapel. Chapel was announced by the strokes of a big hammer, beaten on
every staircase half an hour before by a scout. The education was
suited to Divinity. A sort of supervision was said to be kept over the
young, riotous community, and to a certain extent the Proctors of the
University and the Deans of the different colleges did see that no
very open scandal was committed. There were rules that had in a
general way to be obeyed, and lectures that had to be attended, but as
for care to give high aims, provide refining amusements, give a worthy
tone to the character of responsible beings, there was none ever even
thought of. The very meaning of the word ‘education’ did not appear to
be understood. The college was a fit sequel to the school. The young
men herded together; they lived in their rooms, and they lived out of
them, in the neighbouring villages, where many had comfortable
establishments.... All sorts of contrivances were resorted to to
enable the dissipated to remain out all night, to shield a culprit, to
deceive the dignitaries.” This was in 1809, and even later.
And yet with all this, and while we are told that those who attended
lectures were laughed at, it seems strange that the best divines, and
lawyers, and politicians of the first half of our century, some of
whom we may have known ourselves, must have been formed under that
system. We can hardly believe that it was as bad as here described,
and we must remember that much of the _Memoirs_ of this Scotch lady
can have been written from memory only, and long after the time when
she and her sister lived at University College. Life there, no doubt,
may have been very dull, as there were no other young ladies at
Oxford, and it cannot have been very amusing for these young girls to
dine with sixteen Heads of Houses, all in wide silk cassocks, scarves
and bands, one or two in powdered wigs, so that, as we are told, they
often went home crying. All intercourse with the young men was
strictly forbidden, though it seems to have been not altogether
impossible to communicate, from the garden of the Master’s Lodge, with
the young men bending out of the college windows, or climbing down to
the gardens.
One of these young men, who was at University College at the same
time, might certainly not have been considered a very desirable
companion for these two Scotch girls. It was no other than Shelley.
What they say of him does not tell us much that is new, yet it
deserves to be repeated. “Mr. Shelley,” we read, “afterwards so
celebrated, was half crazy. He began his career with every kind of
wild prank at Eton. At University he was very insubordinate, always
infringing some rule, the breaking of which he knew could not be
overlooked. He was slovenly in his dress, and when spoken to about
these and other irregularities, he was in the habit of making such
extraordinary gestures, expressive of his humility under reproof, as
to overset first the gravity and then the temper of the lecturing
tutor. When he proceeded so far as to paste up atheistical squibs on
the chapel doors, it was considered necessary to expel him privately,
out of regard to Sir Timothy Shelley, the father, who came up at once.
He and his son left Oxford together.”
No one would recognize in this picture the University of Oxford, as it
is at present. _Nous avons changé tout cela_ might be said with great
truth by the Heads of Houses, the Professors, and Fellows of the
present day. And yet what the Highland lady, or rather the Highland
girl, describes, refers to times not so long ago but that some of the
men we have known might have lived through it. How this change came
about I cannot tell, though I can bear testimony to a few survivals of
the old state of things.
The Oxford of 1848 was still the Oxford of the Heads of Houses and of
the Hebdomadal Board. That board consisted almost entirely of Heads of
Houses, and a most important board it was, considering that the whole
administration of the University was really in its hands. The
colleges, on the other hand, were very jealous of their independence;
and even the authority of the Proctors, who represented the University
as such, was often contested within the gates of a college. It is
wonderful that this old system of governing the University through the
Heads of Houses should have gone on so long and so smoothly. Having
been trusted by the Fellows of his own society with considerable power
in the administration of his own college, it was supposed that the
Head would prove equally useful in the administration of the
University. A Head of a House became at once a member of the Council.
And, on the whole, they managed to drive the coach and horses very
well. But often when I had to take foreigners to hear the University
Sermon, and they saw a most extraordinary set of old gentlemen walking
into St. Mary’s in procession, with a most startling combination of
colours, black and red, scarlet and pink, on their heavy gowns and
sleeves, I found it difficult to explain who they were. “Are they your
professors?” I was asked. “Oh, no,” I said, “the professors don’t wear
red gowns, only Doctors of Divinity and of Civil Law, and as every
Head of a House must have something to wear in public, he is
invariably made a Doctor.” I remember one exception only, and at a
much later time, namely, the Master of Balliol, who, like Canning at
the Congress of Vienna, considered it among his most valued
distinctions never to have worn the gown of a D.C.L. or D.D. It is
well known that when Marshal Blücher was made a Doctor at Oxford he
asked, in the innocence of his heart, that General Gneisenau, his
right-hand man, might at least be made a chemist. He certainly had
mixed a most effective powder for the French army under Napoléon.
“But,” my friend would ask, “have you no _Senatus Academicus_, have
you no faculties of professors such as there are in all other
Christian universities?” “Yes and no,” I said. “We have professors,
but they are not divided into faculties, and they certainly do not
form the _Senatus Academicus_, or the highest authority in the
University.”
It seems very strange, but it is nevertheless a fact, that as soon as
a good tutor is made a professor, he is considered of no good for the
real teaching work of the colleges. His lectures are generally
deserted; and I could quote the names of certain professors who
afterwards rose to great eminence, but who at Oxford were simply
ignored and their lecture-rooms deserted. The real teaching or
coaching or cramming for examination is left to the tutors and Fellows
of each college, and the examinations also are chiefly in their hands.
Many undergraduates never see a professor, and, as far as the teaching
work of the University is concerned, the professorships might safely
be abolished. And yet, as I could honestly assure my foreign friends,
the best men who take honour degrees at Oxford are quite the equals of
the best men at Paris or Berlin. The professors may not be so
distinguished, but that is due to a certain extent to the small
salaries attached to some of the chairs. England has produced great
names both in science and philosophy and scholarship, but these have
generally drifted to some more attractive or lucrative centres. When I
first came to Oxford one professor received £40 a year, another
£1,500, and no one complained about these inequalities. A certain
amount of land had been left by a king or bishop for endowing a
certain chair, and every holder of the chair received whatever the
endowment yielded. The mode of appointing professors was very curious
at that time. Often the elections resembled parliamentary elections,
far more regard being paid to political or theological partisanship
than to scientific qualifications. Every M.A. had a vote, and these
voters were scattered all over the country. Canvassing was carried on
quite openly. Travelling expenses were freely paid, and lists were
kept in each college of the men who could be depended on to vote for
the liberal or the conservative candidate. Imagine a professor of
medicine or of Greek being elected because he was a liberal! Some
appointments rested with the Prime Minister, or, as it was called, the
Crown; and it was quoted to the honour of the Duke of Wellington, that
he, when Chancellor of the University, once insisted that the electors
should elect the best man, and they had to yield, though there were
electors who would declare their own candidate the best man, whatever
the opinion of really qualified judges might be. All this election
machinery is much improved now, though an infallible system of
electing the best men has not yet been discovered. One single elector,
who is not troubled by too tender a conscience, may even now vitiate a
whole election; to say nothing of the painful position in which an
elector is placed, if he has to vote against a personal friend or a
member of his own college, particularly when the feeling that it is
dishonourable to disclose the vote of each elector is no longer strong
enough to protect the best interests of the University.
It took me some time before I could gain an insight into all this. The
old system passed away before my very eyes, not without evident
friction between my different friends, and then came the difficulty of
learning to understand the working of the new machinery which had been
devised and sanctioned by Parliament. Reformers arose even among the
Heads of Houses, as, for instance, Dr. Jeune, the Master of Pembroke
College, who was credited with having _rajeuni l’ancienne université_.
But he was by no means the only, or even the chief actor in University
reform. Many of my personal friends, such as Dr. Tait, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rev. H. G. Liddell, afterwards Dean of
Christ Church, Professor Baden-Powell, and the Rev. G. H. S. Johnson,
afterwards Dean of Wells, with Stanley and Goldwin Smith as
Secretaries, did honest service in the various Royal and Parliamentary
Commissions, and spent much of their valuable time in serving the
University and the country. I could do no more than answer the
questions addressed to me by the Commissioners and by my friends, and
this is really all the share I had at that time in the reform of the
University, or what was called Germanizing the English Universities.
At one time such was the unpopularity of these reformers in the
University itself that one of them asked one of the junior professors
to invite him to dinner, because the Heads of Houses would no longer
admit him to their hospitable boards.
Certainly to have been a member of the much abused Hebdomadal Board,
and a Head of a College in those pre-reform days must have been a
delightful life. Before the days of agricultural distress the income
of the colleges was abundant; the authority of the Heads was
unquestioned in their own colleges; not only undergraduates, but
Fellows also had to be submissive. No junior Fellow would then have
dared to oppose his Head at college meetings. If there was by chance
an obstreperous junior, he was easily silenced or requested to retire.
The days had not yet come when a Master of Trinity ventured to remark
that even a junior Fellow might possibly be mistaken. Colleges seemed
to be the property of the Heads, and in some of them the Fellows were
really chosen by them, and the rest of the Fellows after some kind of
examination. The management of University affairs was likewise
entirely in the hands of the Heads of Colleges, and it was on rare
occasions only that a theological question stirred the interest of
non-resident M.A.s, and brought them to Oxford to record their vote
for or against the constituted authorities. Men like the Dean of
Christ Church, Dr. Gaisford, the Warden of Wadham, Dr. Parsons, and
the Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, were in their dominions supreme,
till the rebellious spirit began to show itself in such men as Dr.
Jeune, Professor Baden-Powell, A. P. Stanley, Goldwin Smith and
others.
Nor were there many very flagrant abuses under the old régime. It was
rather the want of life that was complained of. It began to be felt
that Oxford should take its place as an equal by the side of foreign
Universities, not only as a high school, but as a home of what then
was called for the first time “original research.” There can be no
question that as a teaching body, as a high school at the head of all
the public schools in England, Oxford did its duty nobly. A man who at
that time could take a Double First was indeed a strong man, well
fitted for any work in after life. He would not necessarily turn out
an original thinker, a scholar, or a discoverer in physical science,
but he would know what it was to know anything thoroughly. To take
honours at the same time in classics and mathematics required strength
and grasp, and the effort was certainly considerable, as I found out
when occasionally I read a Greek or Latin author with a young
undergraduate friend. What struck me most was the accurate knowledge
a candidate acquired of special authors and special books, but also
the want of that familiarity with the language, Greek or Latin, which
would enable him to read any new author with comparative ease. The
young men whom I knew at the time they went in for their final
examination, were certainly well grounded in classics, and what they
knew they knew thoroughly.
The personal relations existing between undergraduates and their
tutors were very intimate. A tutor took a pride in his pupils, and
often became their friend for life. The teaching was almost private
teaching, and the idea of reading a written lecture to a class in
college did not exist as yet. It was real teaching with questions and
answers; while lectures, written and read out, were looked down upon
as good enough for professors, but entirely useless for the schools.
The social tone of the University was excellent. Many of the tutors
and of the undergraduates came of good families, and the struggle for
life, or for a college living, or college office, was not, as yet, so
fierce as it became afterwards. College tutors toiled on for life, and
certainly did their work to the last most conscientiously. There was
perhaps little ambition, little scheming or pushing, but the work of
the University, such as the country would have it, was well done. If
the Honour-Lists were small, the number of utter failures also was not
very large.
For a young scholar, like myself, who came to live at Oxford in those
distant days, the peace and serenity of life were most congenial,
though several of my friends were among the first who began to fret,
and wished for more work to be done and for better use to be made of
the wealth and the opportunities of the University. My impression at
that time was the same as it has been ever since, that a reform of the
Universities was impossible till the public schools had been
thoroughly reformed. The Universities must take what the schools send
them. There is every year a limited number of boys from the best
schools who would do credit to any University. But a large number of
the young men who are sent up to matriculate at Oxford are not up to
an academic standard. Unless the colleges agree to stand empty for a
year or two, they cannot help themselves, but have to keep the
standard of the matriculation examination low, and in fact do, to a
great extent, the work that ought to have been done at school. Think
of boys being sent up to Oxford, who, after having spent on an average
six years at a public school, are yet unable to read a line of Greek
or Latin which they have not seen before. Yet so it was, and so it is,
unless I am very much misinformed. It is easy for some colleges who
keep up a high standard of matriculation to turn out first-class men;
the real burden falls on the colleges and tutors who have to work hard
to bring their pupils up to the standard of a pass degree, and few
people have any idea how little a pass degree may mean. Those tutors
have indeed hard work to do and get little credit for it, though their
devotion to their college and their pupils is highly creditable. Fifty
years ago even a pass degree was more difficult than it is now,
because candidates were not allowed to pass in different subjects at
different times, but the whole examination had to be done all at once,
or not at all.
I had naturally made it a rule at Oxford to stand aloof from the
conflict of parties, whether academical, theological, or political. I
had my own work to do, and it did not seem to me good taste to obtrude
my opinions, which naturally were different from those prevalent at
Oxford. Most people like to wash their dirty linen among themselves;
and though I gladly talked over such matters with my friends who often
consulted me, I did not feel called upon to join in the fray. I lived
through several severe crises at Oxford, and though I had some
intimate friends on either side, I remained throughout a looker on.
Seldom has a University passed through such a complete change as
Oxford has since the year 1854. And yet the change was never violent,
and the University has passed through its ordeal really rejuvenated
and reinvigorated. It has been said that our constitution has now
become too democratic, and that a University should be ruled by a
Senatus rather than by a Juventus. This is true to a certain extent.
There has been too much unrest, too constant changes, and a lack of
continuity in the studies and in the government of the University.
Every three years a new wave of young masters came in, carried a
reform in the system of teaching and examining, and then left to make
room for a new wave which brought new ideas, before the old ones had a
fair trial. Senior members of the University, heads of houses and
professors, have no more voting power than the young men who have just
taken their degrees, nay, have in reality less influence than these
young Masters, who always meet together and form a kind of compact
phalanx when votes are to be taken. There was even a Non-placet club,
ready to throw out any measure that seemed to emanate from the
reforming party, or threatened to change any established customs,
whether beneficial or otherwise to the University. The University, as
such, was far less considered than the colleges, and money drawn from
the colleges for University purposes was looked upon as robbery,
though of course the colleges profited by the improvement of the
University, and the interests of the two ought never to have been
divided, as little as the interests of an army can be divided from the
interests of each regiment.
When I came to Oxford there was still practically no society except
that of the Heads of Houses, and there were no young ladies to grace
their dinners. Each head took his turn in succession, and had twice or
three times during term to feed his colleagues. These dinners were
sumptuous repasts, though they often took place as early as five. To
be invited to them was considered a great distinction, and, though a
very young man, I was allowed now and then to be present, and I highly
appreciated the honour. The company consisted almost entirely of Heads
of Houses, Canons, and Professors; sometimes there was a sprinkling of
distinguished persons from London, and even of ladies of various ages
and degrees. I confess I often sat among them, as we say in German,
_verrathen und verkauft_. After dinner I saw a number of young men
streaming in, and thought the evening would now become more lively.
But far from it. These young men with white ties and in evening dress
stood in their scanty gowns huddled together on one side of the room.
They received a cup of tea, but no one noticed them or spoke to them,
and they hardly dared to speak among themselves. This, as I was told,
was called “doing the perpendicular,” and they must have felt much
relieved when towards ten o’clock they were allowed to depart, and
exchange the perpendicular for a more comfortable position, indulging
in songs and pleasant talk, which I sometimes was invited to join.
At that time I remember only very few houses outside the circle of
Heads of Houses, where there was a lady and a certain amount of social
life—the houses of Dr. Acland, Dr. Greenhill, Professor Baden-Powell,
Professor Donkin, and Mr. Greswell. In their houses there was less of
the strict academical etiquette, and as they were fond of music,
particularly the Donkins, I spent some really delightful evenings with
them. Nay, as I played on the pianoforte, even the Heads of Houses
began to patronize music at their evening parties, though no gentleman
at that time would have played at Oxford. I being a German, and
Professor Donkin being a confirmed invalid, we were allowed to play,
and we certainly had an appreciative, though not always a silent,
audience.
In one respect, the old system of Oxford Fellowships was still very
perceptible in the society of the University. No Fellows were allowed
to marry, and the natural consequence was that most of them waited for
a college living, a professorship or librarianship, which generally
came to them when they were no longer young men. Headships of colleges
also had so long to be waited for that most of them were generally
filled by very senior and mostly unmarried men. Besides, headships
were but seldom given for excellence in scholarship, science, or even
divinity, but for the sake of personal popularity, and for business
habits. Some of the Fellows gave pleasant and, as I thought, very
Lucullic dinners in college; and I still remember my surprise when I
was asked to the first dinner in Common Room at Jesus College. My host
was Mr. Ffoulkes, who afterwards became a Roman Catholic, and then an
Anglican clergyman again. The carpets, the curtains, the whole
furniture and the plate quite confounded me, and I became still more
confounded when I was suddenly called upon to make a speech at a time
when I could hardly put two words together in English.
The City society was completely separated from the University society,
so that even rich bankers and other gentlemen would never have
ventured to ask members of the University to dine.
Considering the position then held by the Heads of Houses, I feel I
ought to devote some pages to describing some of the most prominent of
them. At my age I may well hold to the maxim _seniores priores_, and
will therefore begin with Dr. Routh, the centenarian President of
Magdalen, as, though, the headship of a house seems to be an excellent
prescription for longevity, there was no one to dispute the venerable
doctor’s claim to precedence in this respect. He was then nearly a
hundred years old, and he died in his hundredth year, and obtained his
wish to have the _C, anno centesimo_, on his gravestone, for, though
tired of life, he often declared, so I was told, that he would not be
outdone in this respect by another very old man, who was a dissenter;
he never liked to see the Church beaten. I might have made his
personal acquaintance, some friends of the old President offering to
present me to him. But I did not avail myself of their offer, because
I knew the old man did not like to be shown as a curiosity. When I saw
him sitting at his window he always wore a wig, and few had seen him
without his wig and without his academic gown. He was certainly an
exceptional man, and I believe he stood alone in the whole history of
literature, as having published books at an interval of seventy years.
His edition of the _Enthymemes_ and _Gorgias of Plato_ was published
in 1784, his papers on the _Ignatian Epistles_ in 1854. His _Reliquia
Sacra_ first appeared in 1814, and they are a work which at that time
would have made the reputation of any scholar and divine. His editions
of historical works, such as Burnet’s _History of his own Time_ and
the _History of the reign of King James_, show his considerable
acquaintance with English history. I have already mentioned how he
used to speak of events long before his time, such as the execution of
Charles I, as if he had been present; nor did he hesitate to declare
that even Bishop Burnet was a great liar. He certainly had seen many
things which connected him with the past. He had seen Samuel Johnson
mounting the steps of the Clarendon building in Broad Street, and
though he had not himself seen Charles I when he held his Parliament
at Oxford, he had known a lady whose mother had seen the king walking
round the Parks at Oxford.
However, we must not forget that many stories about the old President
were more or less mythical, as indeed many Oxford stories are. I was
told that he actually slept in wig, cap and gown, so that once when
an alarm of fire was raised in the quadrangle of his College, he put
his head out of window in an incredibly short time, fully equipped as
above. Many of these stories or “Common-Roomers” as they were called,
still lived in the Common Rooms in my time, when the Fellows of each
College assembled regularly after dinner, to take wine and dessert,
and to talk on anything but what was called _Shop_, i. e. Greek and
Latin. No one inquired about the truth of these stories, as long as
they were well told. In a place like Oxford there exists a regular
descent, by inheritance, of good stories. I remember stories told of
Dr. Jenkins, as Master of Balliol, and afterwards transferred to his
successor, Mr. Jowett. Bodleian stories descended in like manner from
Dr. Bandinell to Mr. Coxe, and will probably be told of successive
librarians till they become quite incongruous. I am old enough to have
watched the descent of stories at Oxford, just as one recognizes the
same furniture in college rooms occupied by successive generations of
undergraduates. To me they sometimes seem threadbare like the old
Turkish carpets in the college rooms, but I never spoil them by
betraying their age, and, if well told, I can enjoy them as much as if
I had never heard them before.
Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, was quite a representative of Old
Oxford, and a well-known character in the University. I had been
introduced to him by Baron Bunsen, and he showed me much hospitality.
I was warned that I should find him very stiff and forbidding. His own
Fellows called him the East-wind. But though he certainly was
condescending, he treated me with great urbanity. He had a very
peculiar habit; when he had to shake hands with people whom he
considered his inferiors, he stretched out two fingers, and if some of
them who knew this peculiarity of his, tendered him two fingers in
return, the shaking of hands became rather awkward. One of the Fellows
of his college told me that, as long as he was only a Fellow, he never
received more than two fingers; when, however, he became Head Master
of a school, he was rewarded with three fingers, or even with the
whole hand, but, as soon as he gave up this place, and returned to
live in college, he was at once reduced to the statutable two fingers.
I don’t recollect exactly how many fingers I was treated to, and I may
have shaken them with my whole hand. Anyhow, I am quite conscious now
of how many times I must have offended against academic etiquette.
How, for instance, is a man to know that people who live at Oxford
during term-time never shake hands except once during term? I doubt,
in fact, whether that etiquette existed when I first came to Oxford,
but it certainly had existed for some time before I discovered it.
Dr. Jenkins, Master of Balliol, was also the hero of many anecdotes.
It was of him that it was first told how he once found fault with an
undergraduate because, whenever he looked out of window, he
invariably saw the young man loitering about in the quad; to which the
undergraduate replied: “How very curious, for whenever I cross the
quad, I always see you, Sir, looking out of window.” He had a quiet
humour of his own, and delighted in saying things which made others
laugh, but never disturbed a muscle of his own face. One of his
undergraduates was called Wyndham, and he had to say a few sharp words
to him at “handshaking,” that is, at the end of term. After saying all
he wanted, he finished in Latin: “Et nunc valeas Wyndhamme,”—the last
two syllables being pronounced with great emphasis. The Master’s
regard for his own dignity was very great. Once, when returning from a
solitary walk, he slipped and fell. Two undergraduates seeing the
accident ran to assist him, and were just laying hands on him to lift
him up, when he descried a Master of Arts coming. “Stop,” he cried,
“stop, I see a Master of Arts coming down the street.” And he
dismissed the undergraduates with many thanks, and was helped on to
his legs by the M.A.
Accidents, or slips of the tongue, will happen to everybody, even to a
Head of a House. One of these old gentlemen, Dr. Symons, of Wadham,
when presiding at a missionary meeting, had to introduce Sir Peregrine
Maitland, a most distinguished officer, and a thoroughly good man.
When dilating on the Christian work which Sir Peregrine had done in
India, he called him again and again Sir Peregrine Pickle. The effect
was most ludicrous, for everybody was evidently well acquainted with
_Roderick Random_, and Sir Peregrine had great difficulty in remaining
serious when the Chairman called on Sir Peregrine Pickle once more to
address his somewhat perplexed audience.
But whatever may be said about the old Heads of Houses, most of them
were certainly gentlemen both by birth and by nature. They are
forgotten now, but they did good in their time, and much of their good
work remains. If I consider who were the Dean and Canons and Students
I met at Christ Church when I first became a member of the House, I
should have to give a very different account from that given by the
Highland lady in her _Memoirs_. The Dean of Christ Church, who
received me, who proposed me for the degree of M.A., and afterwards
allowed me to become a member of the House, was Dr. Gaisford, a real
scholar, though it may be of the old school. He was considered very
rough and rude, but I can only say he showed me more of real courtesy
in those days than anybody else at Oxford. He was, I believe, a little
shy, and easily put out when he suspected anybody, particularly the
young men, of want of consideration. I can quite believe that when an
undergraduate, in addressing him, stepped on the hearthrug on which he
was standing, he may have said: “Get down from my hearthrug,” meaning,
“keep at your proper distance.” I can only say that I never found him
anything but kind and courteous. It so happened that he had been made
a Member of the Bavarian Academy, and I, though very young, had
received the same distinction as a reward for my Sanskrit work, and
the Dean was rather pleased when he heard it. When I asked him whether
he would put my name on the books of the House, he certainly hesitated
a little, and asked me at last to come again next day and dine with
him. I went, but I confess I was rather afraid that the Dean would
raise difficulties. However, he spoke to me very nicely, “I have
looked through the books,” he said, “and I find two precedents of
Germans being members of the House, one of the name of Wernerus, and
another of the name of Nitzschius,” or some such name. “But,” he
continued, smiling, “even if I had not found these names, I should not
have minded making a precedent of your case.” People were amazed at
Oxford when they heard of the Dean’s courtesy, but I can only repeat
that I never found him anything but courteous.
Most of the Heads of Houses asked me to dine with them by sending me
an invitation. The Dean alone first came and called on me. I was then
living in a small room in Walton Street in which I worked, and dined,
and smoked. My bedroom was close by, and I generally got up early, and
shaved and finished my toilet at about 11 o’clock. I had just gone
into my bedroom to shave, my face was half covered with lather, when
my landlady rushed in and told me the Dean had called, and my dogs
were pulling him about. The fact was I had a Scotch terrier with a
litter of puppies in a basket, and when the Dean entered in full
academical dress, the dogs flew at him, pulling the sleeves of his
gown and barking furiously. Covered with lather as I was, I had to
rush in to quiet the dogs, and in this state I had to receive the Very
Rev. the Dean, and explain to him the nature of the work that brought
me to Oxford. It was certainly awkward, but in spite of the disorder
of my room, in spite also of the tobacco smoke of which the Dean did
not approve, all went off well, though, I confess, I felt somewhat
ashamed. In the same interview the Dean asked me about an Icelandic
Dictionary which had been offered to the press by Cleasby and Dasent.
“Surely it is a small barbarous island,” he said, “and how can they
have any literature?” I tried, as well as I could, to explain to the
Dean the extent and the value of Icelandic literature, and soon after
the press, which was then the Dean, accepted the Dictionary which was
brought out later by Dr. Vigfusson, in a most careful and scholarlike
manner. It might indeed safely be called his Dictionary, considering
how many dictionaries are called, not after the name of the compiler
or compilers, but after that of their editor.
This Dr. Vigfusson was quite a character. He was perfectly pale and
bloodless, and had but one wish, that of being left alone. He came to
Oxford first to assist Dr. Dasent, to whom Cleasby, when he died, had
handed over his collections; but afterwards he stayed, taking it for
granted that the University would give him the little he wanted. But
even that little was difficult to provide, as there were no funds that
could be used for that purpose, however uselessly other funds might
seem to be squandered. That led to constant grumbling on his part.
Ever so many expedients were tried to satisfy him, but none quite
succeeded. At last he fell ill and died, and when he was a patient at
the Acland Home, where the nurses did all they could for him, he
several times said to me when I sat with him, that he had never been
so happy in his life as in that Home. I sometimes blame myself for not
having seen more of him at Oxford. But he always seemed to me full of
suspicions and very easily offended, and that made any free
intercourse with him difficult and far from pleasant. Perhaps it was
my fault also. He may have felt that he might have claimed a
professorship of Icelandic quite as well as I, and he may have grudged
my settled position in Oxford, my independence and my freedom.
Whenever we did work together, I always found him pleasant at first,
but very soon he would become wayward and sensitive, do what I would,
and I had to let him go his own way, as I went mine.
I remember dining with the famous Dr. Bull, Canon of Christ Church,
who certainly managed to produce a dinner that would have done credit
to any French chef. He was one of the last pluralists, and many
stories were told about him. One story, which however was perfectly
true, showed at all events his great sagacity. A well-known banker had
been for years the banker of Christ Church. Dr. Bull who was the
College Bursar had to transact all the financial business with him. No
one suspected the banking house which he represented. Dr. Bull,
however, the last time he invited him to dinner, was struck by his
very pious and orthodox remarks, and by the change of tone in his
conversation, such as might suit a Canon of Christ Church, but not a
luxurious banker from London. Without saying a word, Dr. Bull went to
London next day, drew out all the money of the college, took all his
papers from the bank, and the day after, to the dismay of London, the
bank failed, the depositors lost their money, but Christ Church was
unhurt.
Another of the Canons of Christ Church at that time had spent half a
century in the place, and read the lessons there twice every day. Of
course he knew the prayer-book by heart, and as long as he could see
to read there was no harm in his reading. But when his eyesight failed
him and he had to trust entirely to his memory, he would often go from
some word in the evening prayer to the same word in the marriage
service, and from there to the burial service, with an occasional slip
into baptism. The result of it was that he was no longer allowed to
read the service in Chapel except during Long Vacation when the young
men were away. I frequently stayed at Oxford during vacation, and
thought of course that the evening service would never end, till at
last I was asked to name the child, and then I went home.
One Sunday I remember going to chapel, and after prayers had begun the
following conversation took place, loud enough to be heard all through
the chapel. Enter old Canon preceded by a beadle. He goes straight to
his stall, and finding it occupied by a well-known D.D. from London,
who is deeply engaged in prayer, he stands and looks at the
interloper, and when that produces no effect, he says to the beadle:
“Tell that man this is my stall; tell him to get out.”
Beadle: “Dr. A.’s compliments, and whether you would kindly occupy
another stall.”
D.D.: “Very sorry; I shall change immediately.”
Old Canon settles in his stall, prayers continue, and after about ten
minutes the Canon shouts: “Beadle, tell that man to dine with me at
five.”
Beadle: “Dr. A.’s compliments, and whether you would give him the
pleasure of your company at dinner at five.”
D.D.: “Very sorry, I am engaged.”
Beadle: “D.D. regrets he is engaged.”
Old Canon: “Oh, he won’t dine!”
The cathedral was very empty, and fortunately this conversation was
listened to by a small congregation only. I can, however, vouch for
it, as I was sitting close by and heard it myself.
Bodley’s Library, too, was full of good stories, though many of them
do not bear repeating. When I first began to work there, Dr. Bandinell
was Bodleian Librarian. Working in the Bodleian was then like working
in one’s private library. One could have as many books and MSS. as one
desired, and the six hours during which the Library was open were a
very fair allowance for such tiring work as copying and collating
Sanskrit MSS. I well remember my delight when I first sat down at my
table near one of the windows looking into the garden of Exeter. It
seemed a perfect paradise for a student. I must confess that I
slightly altered my opinion when I had to sit there every day during a
severe winter without any fire, shivering and shaking, and almost
unable to hold my pen, till kind Mr. Coxe, the sub-librarian, took
compassion on me and brought me a splendid fur that had been sent him
as a present by a Russian scholar, who had witnessed the misery of the
Librarian in this Siberian Library. Now all this is changed. The
Library is so full of students, both male and female, that one has
difficulty in finding a place, certainly in finding a quiet place; and
all sorts of regulations have been introduced which have no doubt
become necessary on account of the large number of readers, but which
have completely changed, or as some would say, improved the character
of the place. As to one improvement, however, there can be no two
opinions. The Library and the reading-room, the so-called Camera, are
now comfortably warmed, and students may in the latter place read for
twelve hours uninterruptedly, and not be turned out as we were by a
warning bell at four o’clock. And woe to you if you failed to obey the
warning. One day an unfortunate reader was so absorbed in his book
that he did not hear the bell, and was locked in. He tried in vain to
attract attention from the windows, for it was no pleasant prospect to
pass a night among so many ghosts. At last he saw a solitary woman,
and shouted to her that he was locked in. “No,” she said, “you are
not. The Library is closed at four.” Whether he spent the night among
the books is not known. Let us hope that he met with a less logical
person to release him from his cold prison.
Dr. Bandinell ruled supreme in his library, and even the Curators
trembled before him when he told them what had been the invariable
custom of the Library for years, and could not be altered. And,
curiously enough, he had always funds at his disposal, which is not
the case now, and whenever there was a collection of valuable MSS. in
the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before
any other library had the money ready. Now and then, it is true, he
allowed himself to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books
or MSS., but generally he was very wary. He was not always very
courteous to visitors, and still less so to his under-librarians. The
Oriental under-librarian Professor Reay, in particular, who was old
and somewhat infirm, had much to suffer from him, and the language in
which he was ordered about was such as would not now be addressed to
any menial. And yet Professor Reay belonged to a very good family,
though Dr. Bandinell would insist on calling him Ray, and declared
that he had no right to the e in his name. In revenge some people
would give him an additional i and call him Dr. Bandinelli, which made
him very angry, because, as he would say to me, “he had never been one
of those dirty foreigners.” Silence was enjoined in the library, but
the librarian’s voice broke through all rules of silence. I remember
once, when Professor Reay had been looking for ever so long to find
his spectacles without which he could not read the Arabic MSS., and
had asked everybody whether they had seen them, a voice came at last
thundering through the library: “You left your spectacles on my chair,
you old ----, and I sat on them!” There was an end of spectacles and
Arabic MSS. after that. There were two men only of whom Dr. Bandinell
and H. O. Coxe also were afraid, Dr. Pusey, who was one of the
Curators, and later on, Jowett, the Master of Balliol.
There was a vacancy in the Oriental sub-librarianship, and a very
distinguished young Hebrew scholar, William Wright, afterwards
Professor at Cambridge, was certainly by far the best candidate. But
as ill-luck—I mean ill-luck for the Library—would have it, he had
given offence by a lecture at Dublin, in which he declared that the
people of Canaan were Semitic, and not, as stated in Genesis, the
children of Ham. No one doubts this now, and every new inscription has
confirmed it. Still a strong effort was made to represent Dr. Wright
as a most dangerous young man, and thus to prevent his appointment at
Oxford. The appointment was really in the hands of Dr. Bandinell; and
after I had frankly explained to him the motives of this mischievous
agitation against Dr. Wright, and assured him that he was a scholar
and by no means given to what was then called “free-handling of the
Old Testament,” he promised me that he would appoint him and no one
else. However, poor man, he was urged and threatened and frightened,
and to my great surprise the appointment was given to some one else,
who at that time had given hardly any proofs of independent work as a
Semitic scholar, though he afterwards rendered very good and honest
service. I did not disguise my opinion of what had happened; and for
more than a year Dr. Bandinell never spoke to me nor I to him, though
we met almost daily at the library. At last the old man, evidently
feeling that he had been wrong, came to tell me that he was sorry for
what had happened, but that it was not his fault: after this, of
course, all was forgotten. Dr. Wright had a much more brilliant career
opened to him, first at the British Museum, and then as professor at
Cambridge, than he could possibly have had as sub-librarian at Oxford.
He always remained a scholar, and never dabbled in theology.
Some very heated correspondence passed at the time, and I remember
keeping the letters for a long while. They were curious as showing the
then state of theological opinion at Oxford; but I have evidently put
the correspondence away so carefully that nowhere can I find it now.
Let it be forgotten and forgiven.
Many, if not all, of the stories that I have written down in this
chapter may be legendary, and they naturally lose or gain as told by
different people. Who has not heard different versions of the story of
a well-known Canon of Christ Church in my early days, who, when rowing
on the river, saw a drowning man laying hold of his boat and nearly
upsetting it. “Providentially,” he explained, “I had brought my
umbrella, and I had presence of mind enough to hit him over the
knuckles. He let go, sank, and never rose again.” Nobody, I imagine,
would have vouched for the truth of this story, but it was so often
repeated that it provided the old gentleman with a nickname, that
stuck to him always.
I could add more Oxford stories, but it seems almost ill-natured to do
so, and I could only say in most cases _relata refero_. When I first
came here Oxford and Oxford society were to me so strange that I
probably accepted many similar stories as gospel truth. My young
friends hardly treated me quite fairly in this respect. I had many
questions to ask, and my friends evidently thought it great fun to
chaff me and to tell me stories which I naturally believed, for there
were many things which seemed to me very strange, and yet they were
true and I had to believe them. The existence of Fellows who received
from £300 to £800 a year, as a mere sinecure for life, provided they
did not marry, seemed to me at first perfectly incredible. In Germany
education at Public Schools and Universities was so cheap that even
the poorest could manage to get what was wanted for the highest
employments, particularly if they could gain an exhibition or
scholarship. But after a man had passed his examinations, the country
or the government had nothing more to do with him. “Swim or drown” was
the maxim followed everywhere; and it was but natural that the first
years of professional life, whether as lawyers, medical men, or
clergymen, were years of great self-denial. But they were also years
of intense struggle, and the years of hunger are said to have
accounted for a great deal of excellent work in order to force the
doors to better employment. To imagine that after the country had done
its duty by providing schools and universities, it would provide
crutches for men who ought to learn to walk by themselves, was beyond
my comprehension, particularly when I was told how large a sum was
yearly spent by the colleges in paying these fellowships without
requiring any _quid pro quo_.
Having once come to believe that, and several other to me
unintelligible things at Oxford, I was ready to believe almost
anything my friends told me. There are some famous stone images, for
instance, round the Theatre and the Ashmolean Museum. They are
hideous, for the sandstone of which they are made has crumbled away
again and again, but even when they were restored, the same brittle
stone was used. They are in the form of Hermae, and were planned by no
less an architect than Sir Christopher Wren. When I asked what they
were meant for, I was assured quite seriously that they were images of
former Heads of Houses. I believed it, though I expressed my surprise
that the stone-mason who made new heads, when the old showed hardly
more than two eyes and a nose, and a very wide mouth, should carefully
copy the crumbling faces, because, as I was informed, he had been told
to copy the former gentlemen.
It was certainly a very common amusement of my young undergraduate
friends to make fun of the Heads of Houses. They did not seem to feel
that shiver of unspeakable awe for them of which Bishop Thorold
speaks; nay, they were anything but respectful in speaking of the
Doctors of Divinity in their red gowns with black velvet sleeves. If
it is difficult for old men always to understand young men, it is
certainly even more difficult for young men to understand old men.
There is a very old saying, “Young men think that old men are fools,
but old men know that young men are.” Though very young myself, I came
to know several of the old Heads of Houses, and though they certainly
had their peculiarities, they did by no means all belong to the age of
the Dodo. They were enjoying their _otium cum dignitate_, as befits
gentlemen, scholars, and divines, and they certainly deserved greater
respect from the undergraduates than they received.
At the annual _Encaenia_, a great deal of licence was allowed to the
young men; and I know of several strangers, especially foreigners, who
have been scandalized at the riotous behaviour of the undergraduates
in the Theatre, the Oxford _Aula_, when the Vice-Chancellor stood up
to address the assembled audience. My first experience of this was
with Dr. Plumptre, who, as I have said, was very tall and stately;
when his first words were not quite distinct, the undergraduates
shouted, “Speak up, old stick.” When the Warden of Wadham, the Rev.
Dr. Symons, was showing some pretty young ladies to their seats in the
Theatre, he was threatened by the young men, who yelled at the top of
their voices, “I’ll tell Lydia, you wicked old man.” Now Lydia was his
most excellent spouse. At first the remarks of the undergraduates at
the _Encaenia_, or rather _Saturnalia_, were mostly good-natured and
at least witty; but they at last became so rude that distinguished
men, whom the University wished to honour by conferring on them
honorary degrees, felt deeply offended. Sir Arthur Helps declared that
he came to receive an honour, and received an insult. Well do I
remember the Rev. Dr. Salmon, who was asked where he had left his
lobster sauce; Dr. Wendell Holmes was shouted at, whether he had come
across the Atlantic in his “One Hoss Shay”; the Right Hon. W. H.
Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty, was presented with a Pinafore, and
Lord Wolseley with a Black Watch. There was a certain amount of wit in
these allusions, and the best way to take the academic row and riot
was Tennyson’s, who told me on coming out that “he felt all the time
as if standing on the shingle of the sea shore, the storm howling, and
the spray covering him right and left.” After a time, however, these
_Saturnalia_ had to be stopped, and they were stopped in a curious
way, by giving ladies seats among the undergraduates. It speaks well
for them that their regard for the ladies restrained them, and made
them behave like gentlemen.
The reign of the Heads of Houses, which was in full force when I first
settled in Oxford, began to wane when it was least expected. There
had, however, been grumblings among the Fellows and Tutors at Oxford,
who felt themselves aggrieved by the self-willed interference of the
Heads of Colleges in their tutorial work, and, it may be, resented the
airs assumed by men who, after all, were their equals, and in no sense
their betters, in the University.
Society distinctly profited when Fellows and Tutors were allowed to
marry, and when several of the newly-elected of the Heads of Houses,
having wives and daughters, opened their houses, and had interesting
people to dine with them from the neighbourhood and from London.
The Deanery of Christ Church was not only made architecturally into a
new house, but under Dr. Liddell, with his charming wife and
daughters, became a social centre not easily rivalled anywhere else.
There one met not only royalty, the young Prince of Wales, but many
eminent writers, artists, and political men from London, Gladstone,
Disraeli, Richmond, Ruskin, and many others. Another bright house of
the new era was that of the Principal of Brasenose, Dr. Cradock, and
his cheerful and most amusing wife. There one often met such men as
Lord Russell, Sir George C. Lewis, young Harcourt, and many more. She
was the true Dresden china marquise, with her amusing sallies, which
no doubt often gave offence to grave Heads of Houses and sedate
Professors. No one knew her age, she was so young; and yet she had
been maid of honour to some Queen, as I told her once, to Queen Anne.
Having been maid of honour, she never concealed her own peculiar
feelings about people who had not been presented. When she wanted to
be left alone, she would look out of window, and tell visitors who
came to call, “Very sorry, but I am not at home to-day.” Queen’s
College also, under Dr. Thomson, the future Archbishop of York, was a
most hospitable house. Mrs. Thomson presided over it with her peculiar
grace and genuine kindness, and many a pleasant evening I spent there
with musical performances. But here, too, the old leaven of Oxford
burst forth sometimes. Of course, we generally performed the music of
Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn’s compositions were
still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of
these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg,
after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn’s _Hymn of Praise_,
which I was conducting at the pianoforte, walked up to me, as I
thought, to thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real and
somewhat coarse abuse of me, for venturing to introduce such flimsy
music at Oxford. I did not feel very guilty, and fortunately I
remained silent, whether from actual bewilderment or from a better
cause, I can hardly tell.
[Illustration: _F. Max Müller Aged 30._]
Long before Commissions came down on Oxford a new life seemed to be
springing up there, and what was formerly the exception became more
and more the rule among the young Fellows and Tutors. They saw what a
splendid opportunity was theirs, having the very flower of England
to educate, having the future of English society to form. They
certainly made the best of it, helped, I believe, by the so-called
Oxford Movement, which, whatever came of it afterwards, was certainly
in the beginning thoroughly genuine and conscientious. The Tutors saw
a good deal of the young men confided to their care, and the result
was that even what was called the “fast set” thought it a fine thing
to take a good class. I could mention a number of young noblemen and
wealthy undergraduates who, in my early years, read for a first class
and took it; and my experience has certainly been that those who took
a first class came out in later life as eminent and useful members of
society. Not that eminence in political, clerical, literary, and
scientific life was restricted to first classes, far from it. But
first-class men rarely failed to appear again on the surface in later
life. It may be true that a first class did not always mean a
first-class man, but it always seemed to mean a man who had learned
how to work honestly, whether he became Prime Minister or Archbishop,
or spent his days in one of the public offices, or even in a
counting-house or newspaper office.
I felt it was an excellent mixture if a young man, after taking a good
degree at Oxford, spent a year or two at a German University. He
generally came back with fresh ideas, knew what kind of work still had
to be done in the different branches of study, and did it with a
perseverance that soon produced most excellent results. Of course
there was always the difficulty that young men wished to make their
way in life, that is to make a living. The Church, the bar, and the
hospital, absorbed many of those who in Germany would have looked
forward to a University career. In my own subject more particularly,
my very best pupils did not see their way to gaining even an
independence, unless they gave their time to first securing a curacy,
or a mastership at school; and they usually found that, in order to do
their work conscientiously, they had to give up their favourite
studies in which they would certainly have done excellent work, if
there had been no _dira necessitas_. I often tried to persuade my
friends at Oxford to make the fellowships really useful by
concentrating them and giving studious men a chance of devoting
themselves at the University to non-lucrative studies. But the feeling
of the majority was always against what was called derisively Original
Research, and the fellowship-funds continued to be frittered away,
payment by results being considered a totally mistaken principle, so
that often, as in the case of the new septennial fellowships, there
remained the payment only, but no results.
Still all this became clear to me at a much later time only. My first
years at Oxford were spent in a perfect bewilderment of joy and
admiration. No one can see that University for the first time,
particularly in spring or autumn, without being enchanted with it. To
me it seemed a perfect paradise, and I could have wished for myself no
better lot than that which the kindness of my friends later secured
for me there.