OXFORD
THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS VOLUME WERE ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY THE
CARL HENTSCHEL COLOURTYPE, LTD.
[Illustration: 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_
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 à 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 _Crampton’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 1
CHAPTER II
THE STONES OF OXFORD 23
CHAPTER III
DONS ANCIENT AND MODERN 69
CHAPTER IV
UNDERGRADUATES OF THE PRESENT AND THE PAST 101
CHAPTER V
COLLEGE SERVANTS OF THE PRESENT AND THE PAST 147
CHAPTER VI
THE OXFORD DAY 165
CHAPTER VII
IN A COLLEGE GARDEN 207
CHAPTER VIII
OLD OXFORD DAYS 219
CHAPTER IX
THE OXFORD COUNTRY 245
CHAPTER X
IN PRAISE OF OXFORD 255
List of Illustrations
Owner of Original.
1. The Clarendon Building, _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ _Frontispiece_
Broad Street
Facing page
2. Oxford, from the Sheldonian _Mr. Cecil Turner, M.A._ 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.A._ 24
Church College
8. St. Giles’s, looking towards _Rev. George Wharton, M.A._ 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
13. Oriel College _The Royal Institute of 38
Painters in Water-Colours_
14. Grove Street _Mr. J. W. Taphouse_ 40
15. New College _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 42
16. Interior of the “ “ 44
Bodleian Library
17. Interior of the _Sir William R. Anson, Bart., 46
Library, All D.C.L., M.P._
Souls’ College
18. The Cloisters, _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 48
Magdalen College
19. St. John’s College “ “ 50
20. Magdalen Tower and “ “ 52
Botanic Garden
21. Magdalen Tower and “ “ 54
Bridge
22. All Souls’ College _Mr. F. P. Osmaston, M.A._ 56
and the High
Street
23. Interior of the _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 58
Sheldonian
Theatre
24. Corpus Christi “ “ 60
College
25. Christ _Mr. J. W. Taphouse_ 62
Church--Peckwater
Quadrangle
26. The Radcliffe _Mr. Henry Silver_ 64
Library, or
Camera Bodleiana,
from All Souls’
College
27. Entrance Gateway of _Mr. J. W. Taphouse_ 66
Hertford College
and the Radcliffe
Library
28. Interior of the _Mr. James Orrock, R.I._ 68
Cathedral of
Christ Church
29. Magdalen College, _Mr. J. W. Taphouse_ 72
from the Botanic
Garden
30. The Radcliffe Library, or _Mr. Henry Silver_ 80
Camera Bodleiana, from
Brasenose College Quadrangle
31. Bishop King’s House _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 82
32. The Clarendon Building, _Mr. Henry Silver_ 86
looking East
33. All Saints’ Church, from _Dr. A. Hugh Thomson_ 92
Turl Street
34. Trinity College _Dr. George Garlick_ 96
35. Interior of the Library of _Mr. J. W. Taphouse_ 98
Merton College
36. Christ Church College--Tom _Mr. Edgar J. Elgood, M.A._ 104
Quadrangle
37. Holywell Church _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 112
38. The Bathing Sheds, or “ “ 120
“Parsons’ Pleasure”
39. Interior of the Hall, Magdalen _Mr. James Orrock, R.I._ 136
College
40. A “Study” in the Bodleian _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 138
Library
41. The Tom Quadrangle, “ “ 156
Christ Church, from the
South Entrance
42. Corpus Christi College and “ “ 158
Merton Tower, from
Christ Church Meadows
43. The Entrance to Queen’s _Mr. Horace Field, 162
College from Logic Lane F.R.I.B.A._
44. Exeter College Chapel, from _Mr. J. W. Taphouse_ 172
Ship Street
45. Entrance to the Divinity _Mr. John Fulleylove, 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. W. Taphouse_ 210
College
50. In Trinity College Gardens _The Rev. Arthur H. Stanton, 214
M.A._
51. The Fellows’ Garden, Merton _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 216
College
52. The Library, Oriel College _Mr. C. F. Bell, M.A._ 224
53. Magdalen College Tower, _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 226
from the Meadows
54. The Cloisters, New College _Mr. James Orrock, R.I._ 232
55. Broad Street, looking West _Mr. Walter S. S. Tyrwhitt, 238
M.A._
56. The High Street looking _Mr. A. T. Hollingsworth_ 240
East
57. The Botanic Garden _Mr. Christopher Bradshaw_ 242
58. Oxford, from South Hinksey _Mr. J. W. Taphouse_ 248
59. Oxford from Headington “ “ 250
Hill
60. The Old Ashmolean _Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I._ 260
Museum and Sheldonian
Theatre
_The illustrations in this volume were engraved and printed by the
Carl Hentschel Colourtype, Ltd._
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 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, 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 gentlemen 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 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
[Illustration: 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.]
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 æsthete, 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--
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 Phædo 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
[Illustration: BISHOP HEBER’S TREE
To the left are seen the steps leading to the Radcliffe 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.]
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
hospitality; 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 or, _Si qua est ea gloria_,
gather fruit from the espaliers 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 suffer 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 “Ionica”:--
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 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 painfully 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 à 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 sake.” When their sound is dead it
is sweet to enter that peacefullest 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 contempt 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 munificence which is still
his renown. A chantry for the comfort of departed souls became a kind of
scholarship.
[Illustration: 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.]
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 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.
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.
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 naïvely 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 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, benefactors, master-masons, scholars,
philosophers, and the later soldiers, poets, statesmen, and wits, and
finally some one, among the rich in influence of yesterday, who embodies
for one or another of us the sweetness of the place.
For me, when the first splendour of the city in my imagination has
somewhat grown dim, I see in the midst and on high, a room, little wider
than the thickness of its walls, which were part stone, part books; for
the books fitted naturally into the room, leaving spaces only for a bust
of Plato, a portrait of Sir Thomas Browne, a decanter, and a window
commanding sky and clouds and stars above an horizon of many towers.
There, too, is a great fire; a dowager brown teapot; with a pair of
slippers,--and to get into them was no whit less magical than into the
seven-league boots. I see a chair also, where a man might sit, curled,
with the largest folio and be hidden. I guess at the face of the man
under the folio. He was a small, shrunken, elvish figure, with a smile
like the first of June often budding in a face like the last of
December. In rest, that face was grim as if carved in limestone; in
expression, like waters in Spring. His curled, ebony hair had a singular
freshness and hint of vitality that gave the lie to his frail form and
husky voice. Cut in wood, the large nose and chin, peering forward,
would have served well as the figure-head of a merry ship, and to me he
seemed indeed to travel on such a ship towards a land that no other man
desires. His talk was ever of men, fighting, ploughing, singing; and how
fair women be;
[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY CHURCH OF ST. MARY
The podium and part of one of 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.]
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 dawn,--go a-maying,--sing hunting
ditties amid the snow to the leaden east and the frozen starlings, by
Marston or above Wytham and Eynsham. His laugh fell upon our ears like
an echo from long-forgotten, Arcadian existences; it was in harmony with
the songs of thrushes and the murmur of the Evenlode. Coming into his
room we expected to see a harp at his side. But where are the voices
that we heard and uttered?--
Are they exiled out of stony breasts,
Never to make return?
Once more is the blackbird’s fluting a mystery save that it speaks of
him, last of the Bards.
“Beautiful Mother,” he sang, to Oxford, “too old not to be sad, too
austere to look sad and to mourn! Sometimes thou art young to my eyes
because thy children are always young, and for a little while it was a
journey to youth itself to visit thee. More often, not only art thou old
and austere, but thy fresh and youthful children seem to have learned
austerity and the ways of age, for love of thee, graciously apparelling
their youth,--so that I have met old Lyly in Holywell, and Johnson at
the Little Clarendon Street bookshop, and Newman by Iffley
rose-window,--with their age taken away, by virtue of a mellower light
upon thy lawns and a mellower shade under thy towers, than other cities.
Or have I truly heard thee weep when the last revelry is quiet, and the
scholar by his lamp sees thee as thou wast and wilt be, and the
moonlight has her will with the spires and gardens?
[Illustration: 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.]
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.”
THE STONES OF OXFORD
[Illustration: 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.]