Oxford is one of the great gates through which our rich middle classes send
their sons to be amalgamated with the landed and titled aristocracy, who are
all educated either there or at Cambridge.
To say of any one that he is an "Oxford man," at once implies that he is a
gentleman, and when a well-looking, well-mannered, and even moderately
endowed young gentleman has passed respectably through his curriculum at
Christchurch or Magdalen, Balliol, Oriel, University, or any other of the
correct colleges, it rests with himself whether he runs the race of public
life in England on equal terms with the sons of the oldest of the titled and
untitled aristocracy, even though his father were an eminent retired dust
contractor, and his mother laundry maid or factory girl. But money alone
won't do it, and the pretension, the display, the coxcombry permitted in a
peer, must be carefully avoided by a parvenu. Thus Oxford interests classes
who care very little for its educational, antiquarian, or architectural
resources, as one of the institutions of the country by which any capable man
may cut off his plebeian entail, and start according to the continental term
"noble."
The material beauty of Oxford is great--the situation, in a rich valley
bounded by softly flowing rivers, fine--the domes, and spires, and old grey
towers rising in clusters, prepare the mind of the approaching traveller for
the city where the old colleges and churches, planting out and almost
composing it, afford at every bend of the long streets, at every turn of the
narrow thoroughfares, some grand picture, or charming architectural effect;
even our Quakers are proud of Oxford in England when they travel in America.
Then Oxford is so decorously clean, so spotlessly free from the smoke of
engines and the roar of machinery; the groves and gardens, and trim green
turf seen through richly-carved and corbeled archways, give such a feeling of
calm study, and pleasant leisure, that we will defy the bitterest radical and
the sourest dissenter not to be softened and charmed by his first
impressions.
To those who arrive prepared to be pleased, stored with associations of the
past, fortunate enough to have leisure and introductions to some affable don
long resident, and proud to display the treasures and glories of his beloved
Alma Mater, Oxford affords for many days a treat such as no other city in the
world can supply to an Englishman.
The best known route from London is by the Great Western Railway, which,
according to the original plan, would have passed close to the city. But all
the University and ecclesiastical dignitaries were up in arms; they saw, in
their mind's eye, the tender, innocent undergraduates flying from the
proctor-guarded precincts, where modesty, virtue, and sobriety ever reign, to
the vice-haunted purlieus of London, at all hours of the night and day. The
proctors and professors triumphed; the railway was obliged to leave a gap of
ten miles of common road between its invading, unhallowed course, and the
sacred city; and great was the rejoicing in the Convocation Chamber, and many
the toasts in the Senior Common Rooms to the health of the faithful sons of
Oxon, who in Parliament had saved the city from this commercial desecration.
But as even Grosvenor-square was at length glad to admit gas after abiding
longest of all in the genteel gloom of oil lamps, so was Oxford in the end
glad to be put on a branch, as it could not be put on a main line; and now,
beside the rail on which we are travelling, Worcester, Banbury, and
Wolverhampton, and two roads to London and Birmingham are open to the
wandering tastes of the callow youth of the University; as may be ascertained
by a statistical return from the railway stations whenever a steeple-chase or
Jenny Lind concert takes place in or near any of the towns enumerated.
The entrance from Bletchley is, perhaps, the finer, as rolling round a
semicircle, we sweep into sight of the dome of Radcliffe Library and the
spire of St. Mary's Church, descend, enter the city by the Cheltenham-road,
and passing through an inferior suburb, reach the head of High-street, of
which a great German art critic declared, "that it had not its equal in the
whole world." Wide, long, and gently curving, approached from either end, it
presents in succession the colleges of Lincoln, Brasenose, University, All
Souls, Queen's, St. Mary's Church, with peeps of gardens with private houses,
and with shops, which do not detract, but rather add, to the dignity and
weight of the grand old buildings.
Having slowly sauntered up and down, and scanned the various characters
peculiar to the City of Universities--as, for instance, an autocrat in the
person of a Dean of Christchurch, a Principal of Balliol, or a Master of
Jesus, a Proctor newly made, but already endowed with something of the
detective police expression; several senior fellows, plump, shy, proud, and
lazy--walking for an appetite, and looking into the fishmongers on their way
to the parks; a "cocky" Master of Arts, just made, and hastening to call on
all his friends and tradesmen to show off his new dignity, and rustle the
sleeves of his new gown; three lads, just entered from a public school (last
month they laid out tip in Mother Brown's tarts), on their way to order three
courses and dessert at the Mitre, where very indifferent fare is provided for
fashionable credit prices; a pale student, after Dr. Pusey's own heart, in
cap and gown, pacing monk-like along, secretly telling his beads; a tuft
(nobleman) lounging out of the shop of a tailor, who, as he follows his
lordship to the door, presents the very picture of a Dean bowing to a Prime
Minister, when a bishop is very sick.
A few ladies are seen, in care of papas in caps and gowns, or mammas, who
look as if they were Doctors of Divinity, or deserved to be. The Oxford
female is only of two kinds--prim and brazen. The latter we will not
describe; the former seem to live in perpetual fear of being winked at, and
are indescribable.
From these street scenes, where the ridiculous only is salient, for the quiet
and gentlemanly pass by unnoticed, while pompous dons and coxcombical
undergraduates are as certain of attention as turkeycocks and bantams, we
will turn into the solemn precincts of a few of the colleges.
At the head stands Christchurch in dignity and size, founded by Cardinal
Wolsey, Pope Clement VII. consenting, in 1525, on the revenues of some dozen
minor monasteries, under the title of Cardinal College. The fall of
Wolsey--England's last Cardinal, until by the invitation of modern mediaeval
Oxford, Pius IX. sent us a Wiseman--stopped the works. One of Wolsey's latest
petitions to Henry was, "That his college at Oxford might go on." And by the
King, after some intermediate changes, it was finally established as
Christchurch.
The foundation now consists of a dean, eight canons, eight chaplains, a
schoolmaster, an organist, eight choristers, and 101 students, of whom a
considerable number are exhibitioners from Westminster School. It is in
symbolism of these students that the celebrated Great Tom of Christchurch
clangs each evening 101 times. Besides these students, there are generally
nearly 1000 independent members, consisting of noblemen, gentlemen commoners,
and commoners. To be a gentleman commoner of Christchurch, all other
advantages being equal, is the most "correct thing" in the University; none
can compete with them, unless it be the gentlemen commoners of Magdalen. The
Christchurch noblemen, or tufts, are considered the leaders of fashion,
whether it be in mediaeval furniture, or rat hunting, boating, or steeple-
chase riding, old politics or new religions.
Among the illustrious men it claims as pupils are, Sir Philip Sydney and Ben
Jonson, Camden and South, Bolingbroke and Locke, Canning and Sir Robert Peel,
whom Oxford rejected. The front is in Aldate's-street, for which consult Mr.
Spier's pretty guide card, the entrance under the lofty clock tower, whence,
at ten minutes past nine every evening, the mighty tom peals forth his
sonorous summons. The "Tom Gateway" leads into the quadrangle familiarly
termed "quad," 264 feet by 261, the dimensions originally planned by Wolsey;
but the buildings which bound it on three sides were executed after the
destruction of the old edifice in the great civil wars from designs by Sir
Christopher Wren in 1688.
The Hall on the south side is ancient; we ascend to it by a flight of steps
under a handsome groined roof supported by a single pillar. The Hall is 115
feet long, 40 wide, and 50 high. The open roof of oak richly carved,
decorated with the arms of Wolsey and Henry VIII. Other carvings adorn the
fire-place and a fine bay window.
On the sides of the rooms are hung a series of 120 portraits of
ecclesiastics, poets, philosophers (these are few), statesmen, and noblemen,
representing distinguished students of the College.
The dinner hour, when the dean and chief officers sit in state on the dais,
masters and bachelors at the side tables, and undergraduates at the lower
end, is an impressive sight, recalling feudal times. The feeding is the
worst of any in Oxford, much to the advantage of the taverns and pastrycooks.
When in 1566 Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford, a play was performed before her
in this hall by the students, in the course of which, "a cry of hounds
belonging to themselves" having been counterfeited in the quadrangle, the
students were seized with a sudden transport; whereat her Majesty cried out,
"O excellent! these boys in very truth are ready to leap out of the window to
follow the hounds."
Amid the many changes of taste and opinion since the days of Queen Bess, the
love of hunting still prevails in Christchurch, not one of the least healthy
tastes, in an age of perpetual competing work; and the Christchurch drag is
one of the stock amusements anathematized toward the end and permitted at the
beginning of every hunting term, for the glory of the chief tuft and the
benefit of hard-reading men, who cannot waste their time in trotting from
cover to cover dependent on the vagaries of such an uncertain animal as a
fox, and are therefore content to hunt a "cad" armed with a red herring over
the stiffest country he can pick.
After the Hall, the Kitchen should be visited. It is the most ancient part
of the building, for Wolsey, with a truly ecclesiastical appreciation of the
foundation of all sound learning, began with the kitchen, and it survived
him. Agriculture, gardening, cooking, and confectionery, were among the
civilizing arts brought to great perfection by religious houses and lost for
a long period after the Reformation, which, like other strong medicines,
cleared our heads at the expense of our stomachs.
In Wolsey's kitchen may be seen the huge gridiron on which our ancestors
roasted sheep whole and prepared other barbarous disgusting dishes.
In the Peckwater Quadrangle are to be found the Library and the Guise
collection of pictures, which contains curious specimens of that early school
which the mad mediaevalists are now fond of imitating, and a few examples of
the famous Italian masters who rose on the force of genius, which did not
disdain study but did disdain imitation.
Wickliff was a warden, and Sir Thomas More a student, in Canterbury Hall,
which was amalgamated in Wolsey's College.
The Chapel of Christchurch is the Cathedral of Oxford. The oldest parts
belonged to the church of St. Frideswide's Priory, consecrated A.D. 1180.
Wolsey pulled down fifty feet of the nave and adapted it to the use of his
college. The stained glass windows, without which every Gothic cathedral has
a bare, naked, cold appearance, and which were peculiarly fine, nearly all
fell a sacrifice to puritanical bigotry.
For the many curious and beautiful architectural features we must refer in
this instance, as in all others, to the architectural guides, such as
Parker's, with which every one who feels any interest in the subject will
provide himself.
Leaving Christchurch by the Canterbury Gate up Merton-lane, we pass on one
hand Corpus Christi, founded in the reign of Henry VIII., where Bishop Sewel,
author of "The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," and Richard Hooker, a
Protestant whom even a Pope praised, were bred; on the other, Oriel, where
studied Walter Raleigh, one of England's greatest men, a poet and
philosopher, soldier and statesman, mariner and historian; not guiltless, yet
worthy of pity in his fall and long imprisonment, and of honour in his brave
and Christian death,--the victim of the ever feeble treacherous Stuarts. What
other line of kings has had the fate to sign away the lives of two such men
as Raleigh and Strafford? Oriel also claims as students Prynne, who, with
his libels and his ears, laid the foundation of our liberty of the press;
Bishop Butler, whose "Analogy" showed how logic and philosophy could be
applied to support the cause of Christian truth; Dr. Arnold, the reformer of
our modern school system, whom Oxford persecuted during life and honoured in
death; and lastly, the clever crotchety Archbishop Whateley, who has not only
proved that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed, but that Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's
bankrupt schemes of colonization were triumphant successes. Next we come to
Merton, the most ancient of all the colleges, founded 7th January 1264. The
oldest of its buildings now standing is the library, the oldest in England,
erected 1377. Wickliff was a student of Merton. University College, which
next falls in our way, claims to date from King Alfred, but has no charters
so ancient as those of Merton. The buildings are not more early than Charles
I., but the chapel contains some of Grinling Gibbons's best carvings, and a
monument by Flaxman of Sir William Jones, who was a fellow of this
University. The modern part, fronting High-street, is from the designs of
Barry, the architect of the Palace of Westminster.
University College has one of the old customs, of which several are retained
in Oxford, called "chopping at the tree." On Easter Sunday a bough is
dressed up with flowers and evergreens, and laid on a turf by the buttery.
After dinner each member, as he leaves the hall, takes up a cleaver and chops
at the tree, and then hands over "largess" to the cook, who stands by with a
plate. The contribution is, for the master half a guinea, the fellows five
shillings, and other members half a crown each. In like manner, at Queen's
College, which stands opposite University, on Christmas day a boar's head is
brought into the hall in procession, while the old carol is sung--
The boar's head in hand bear I
Bedecked with bays and rosemary,
And I pray you, my masters, be merry.
Qui estis in convivio,
Caput apri defero,
Reddens laudes Domino.
While on New Year's day the bursar presents to every member a needle and
thread with the words, "Take this and be thrifty." We have not been able to
obtain a statistical return of the standing of the Queen's men in the books
of the tradesmen of Oxford as compared with members of other colleges, but we
recommend the question to Mr. Newdegate or some other Oxonian figure monger.
This college was founded by Philippa, queen of Edward III. It was directed
by the statutes that there should be twelve fellows and seventy poor
scholars, who were to be summoned to dinner by the sound of a trumpet; when
the fellows, clothed in scarlet robes, were to sit and eat, while the poor
scholars, kneeling in token of humility, were to dispute in philosophy. The
kneeling, disputing, and scarlet robes have been discontinued, but the
trumpet still sounds to dinner. There are usually about 300 members on the
books of this college.
Lower down the High-street is All-Souls, whose two towers are picturesque
centres of most views of Oxford. The buildings are various in character and
merit, and well worth examination. The grand court was designed by Hawksmoor
rather on the principles of a painter than an architect; he wished it to make
a good picture with the existing buildings, and he succeeded. All-Souls is
composed entirely of fellows, who elect from other colleges gentlemen whose
qualification consists in being "bene nati, bene vestiti, et moderater docti
in arte musica."
With so easy a qualification as that of being well born, well dressed, and
able to sing the Old Hundredth Psalm, Old King Cole, or Kilruddery, it may be
imagined that All-Souls has never done anything to disturb the minds of
kings, cabinets, or reviewers, or even of the musical critics. Pleasant
gentlemanly fellows, when they do get into parliament it is usually as the
advocates of deceased opinions. Had Joanna Southcote been genteel, the
fellows of All-Souls and some other colleges would have continued Joanna
Southcotians fifty years after her decease.
All-Souls, too, has its legend and its commemorative ceremony. The diggers
of the foundations found in an old drain a monstrous mallard, a sort of
alderman among wild ducks, thriving and growing fat amid filth. On being
cooked he was found first-rate, and, in memory of this treasure-trove and of
the foundation-day, annually on the 14th January the best mallard that can be
found is brought in in state, all the mallardians chanting--
O the swapping swapping mallard, etc.
From Queen's we proceed to New College, built in the palmiest days of Gothic
architecture by William of Wykeham, also architect of Windsor Castle and of
Winchester Cathedral, of which he was bishop, as well as Chancellor of
England under Edward III. He was indeed a learned, pious, earnest man. "A
worker-out of the glorious dreams he dreamed." According to his plan, a
certain number of poor boys, of origin as humble as his own, were to receive
a training in the best learning of the age; from these, the ablest were to be
selected annually and sent to New College, with the enjoyment of such an
income as would support them while studying philosophy and theology. At
present, after a year's probation, youths at eighteen or nineteen become
actual fellows, in enjoyment of an income varying from 190 to 250 pounds per
annum, until such time as they marry or are provided with a college living.
"Wykeham laid the first stone of his new college on the 5th March 1380. Being
finished, the first warden and fellows took possession of it April 14, 1386,
at three o'clock in the morning." The original buildings consist of the
principal quadrangle, containing the hall, chapel, and library, the
cloisters, and the tower. Additions, quite out of keeping with the rich
simplicity of the original design, were made by Sir Christopher Wren. The
chapel, first shorn of its ancient splendour by puritan zeal, and since
restored in mistaken taste, is still one of the most beautiful edifices of
the kind in England,--perhaps in Europe. Weeks of study will not satisfy or
exhaust the true student of Gothic architecture here. We trust that, sooner
or later, some of the funds now spent on guttling and guzzling will be
devoted to substituting facsimiles of ancient coloured glass for the painted
mistakes of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and restoring the ancient glories of gilt
and colour to the carved work.
If possible, the stranger should attend the service, when he will hear grand
singing and accompanied by a magnificent organ. The silver gilt crozier of
Wykeham, formerly studded with rich gems, is one of the few relics of value
preserved by New College. Charles I. received the greater part of a rich
collection of plate as a contribution to his military chest in the great
civil war. This crozier interests, for, gazing on it, we are carried back
five centuries, when it was not a bauble made in Birmingham, but a symbol of
actual power and superior intelligence. The sceptre of a prince of a church
which then absorbed almost all the intellect and all the learning of the age.
The garden with its archery-ground, and the "Slipe," with its stables and
kennels, complete what was meant to be a temple of sacred learning and active
piety, but which has become a very Castle of Indolence, a sort of Happy
Valley, for single men. Winchester School still retains its ancient
character for scholarship. (It is said to be almost impossible to "pluck" a
Wykehamist); but the foundation has been grossly abused, the elected being
not poor boys but the sons of wealthy clergymen and gentlemen, as indeed they
had need be, for, by another abuse, the parents of boys on the foundation
have to pay about 40 pounds a-year for their board. But, when a boy,
distinguished for diligence and ability among his fellows, has been, at
eighteen or nineteen years, elected to a Fellowship of New College, his work
for life is done,--no more need for exertion,--every incentive to epicurean
rest. Fine rooms, a fine garden, a dinner daily the best in Oxford, served
in a style of profusion and elegance that leaves nothing to be desired, wine
the choicest, New College ale most famous, a retiring-room, where, in
obsequious dignity, a butler waits on his commands, with fresh bottles of the
strong New College port, or ready to compound a variety of delicious drinks,
amid which the New College cyder cup and mint julep can be specially
recommended. Newspapers, magazines, and novels, on the tables of both the
junior and senior common rooms, and a stable for his horse and a kennel for
his dog, form part of this grand club of learned ignorance. And so, in idle
uselessness, he spends life, unless by good fortune he falls in love and
marries; even then, we pity his wife and his cook for the first twelve
months,--or, by reaction, flies into asceticism and becomes a father of St.
Philip Neri or a follower of Saint Pusseycat.
But, after all this virtuous remonstrance on the misdirection of William of
Wykeham's noble endowment, we must own that, of our Oxford acquaintance, none
are more agreeable than those New College fellows of the old school, "who
wore shocking bad hats and asked you to dinner." Much better than the cold-
blooded "monks without mass" who are fast superseding them, just as idle and
more ill-natured.
From New College we will go on to Magdalen, the finest--the wealthiest of all:
it cannot be described, it must be seen; with its buildings occupying eleven
acres and pleasure-grounds a hundred acres, its tower whereon every May
morning at daybreak a mass used to be and a carol is still sung, and its
deer-park. Here we may say, as of New College, is too much luxury for
learning.
The sons of dukes have become mathematicians; we have known an attorney's
clerk, the son of a low publican, become an accomplished linguist in his
leisure hours,--but such men are mental miracles, almost monsters: a fellow of
Magdalen or New College who works as hard as other men deserves to be
canonized.
We have not space to say anything of the other Colleges. St. John's is noted
for its gardens, Pembroke because Samuel Johnson lodged there for as long a
space as his poverty would permit.
The Colleges visited, we proceed to "The Schools," which contain the Bodleian
Library, founded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1573, and by bequests, gifts from
private individuals, by the expenditure of a sum for the last seventy years
out of the University chest, and the privilege of a copy of every new British
publication, has become one of the finest collections in Europe; especially
rich in Oriental literature. The books are freely open to the use of all
literary men properly introduced, and the public are permitted to view the
rooms three times a week.
The Picture Gallery contains a collection of portraits of illustrious
individuals connected with the University, by Holbein, Vandyke, Kneller,
Reynolds, Wilkie, and others. Among these are Henry VIII., the Earl of
Surrey, and Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. Among the sculptures are a bust of
the Duke of Wellington by Chantrey, and a brass statue of the Earl of
Pembroke, Chancellor of the University from 1616 to 1630, which is said to
have been executed from a design by Rubens.
There is also a chair made from timber of the ship in which Drake sailed
round the world, and the lantern of Guy Fawkes.
On the ground floor are the Arundel marbles, brought from Smyrna in the
seventeenth century by the earl of that name.
The Theatre, close at hand, built by Sir Christopher Wren, will contain three
thousand persons, and should be seen to be appreciated when crowded by the
elite of the University and of England, on the occasion of some of the great
Oxford festivals, when the rich costumes of the University, scarlet, purple,
and gold, are set off by the addition of England's beauty not unadorned; as,
for instance, on the last visit of the Queen and Prince Albert.
The Clarendon Press, built from designs of Vanbrugh out of the profits of the
University (garbled) edition of "Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion,"
and the Ashmolean Museum, where may be seen the head of the dodo, that
extinct and deeply to be regretted bird, are close at hand, as also the
Radcliffe Library, from the dome of which an excellent view of the city may
be obtained.
The University Galleries, which present an imposing front to St. Giles-
street, contain, beside antique sculpture, the original models of all
Chantrey's busts, and a collection of original drawings of Michael Angelo and
Raffaelle, made by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and purchased after his death by the
University, the present Earl of Eldon contributing two-thirds of the
purchase-money.