OXFORD
My introduction to Oxford and its life was somewhat chaotic. Out of that
chaos, as I shall show later, I achieved both good and evil. But I must
first explain how the chaos arose. By the time I had reached seventeen
it had become obvious to my father--or, rather, to the people at the
University, who so advised him--that if I was to be able to matriculate
at Balliol I must set my intellectual house in order and learn something
of the things upon which alone one could matriculate. The irony of
accident had designed my mental equipment to be of a kind perfectly
useless for the purposes of the preliminary Oxford examinations. It was
no doubt true that I knew enough poetry and general literature to
confound half the Dons in Balliol. I also knew enough mathematics, as,
to my astonishment, a mathematical tutor at Oxford in an unguarded hour
confessed to me, to enable me to take a First in Mathematical Mods. But
knowledge of literature, a power of writing, a not inconsiderable
reading in modern history, and the aforesaid mathematics were no use
whatever for the purposes of matriculation.
In those days Latin and Greek Grammar, Latin Prose and "Latin and Greek
Unseen," and certain specially-prepared Greek and Latin Books were
essentials. It is true that these alone would not have matriculated me.
In addition to them the writing of a good essay and of a good general
paper were required, to obtain success. Still, the _sine qua non_
was what the representative of the old Oxford in Matthew Arnold's
_Friendship's Garland_ calls "the good old fortifying classical
curriculum." I could by no possibility have reached the heights of
"Hittal," who, it will be remembered, wrote "some longs and shorts about
the Caledonian boar which were not bad." Though English verses came so
easily, Latin verses did not come at all.
After many family councils it was decided that I should accept the
invitation of my uncle and aunt (Professor T. H. Green and his wife) and
take up my residence with them in their house in St. Giles's. There I
read for Responsions. If it had not been for some extraordinary power of
resistance in the matter of Latin and Greek I ought to have found the
task easy, for, as I have said elsewhere, I had two of the most
accomplished scholars in the University to teach me. One was Mr. Henry
Nettleship, soon to become Regius Professor of Latin. The other was a
young Balliol man who had just won a Magdalen Fellowship and who was
destined to become President of that famous college over which he still
presides so worthily and so wisely. But, alas! I was Greek and Latin
proof, and all I really gained from my learned teachers was two very
close and intimate friends, and the privilege of meeting at the house of
the one and in the rooms in the College of the other, a good many of the
abler Dons, young and old, and getting on good terms with them. In the
same way, I used to see at my uncle's house the best of Oxford company,
and also a certain number of Cambridge men.
It must not be supposed, however, that I was not learning anything. I
was getting a priceless store of knowledge,
[Illustration: J St Loe Strachey. Ætat 16 (From a photograph done at
Cannes, about 1876.)] nay, wisdom from my uncle, who was kindness
itself and who was, I am sure, fond of me. He was almost as ready to
talk and to answer questions as my father. In him, too, I saw the
working of a great and good man and of a noble character.
Though in a different, but equally true, way, Green was as religious a
man as my father. If my father felt the personal relationship between
God and His children more than Green did, that was chiefly because
Green's mind could take nothing which had not the sanction of reason,
or, to be more accurate, of an intuition guarded so closely by Reason
that very little of the mystic element in Faith remained unchallenged.
No one could live with Green without loving him and feeling reverence
for his deep sincerity and his instinct for the good.
Though foolish people talked of him as a heretic, or even an infidel, he
was in truth one of the most devout of men. That noble passage in
Renan's play fits him exactly. The Almighty, conversing as in Job with
one of His Heavenly Ministers as to this Planet's people, says:
Apprends, enfant fidèle, ma tendresse pour ceux qui doutent ou qui
nient. Ces doutes, ces négations sont fondés en raison; ils viennent de
mon obstination à me cacher. Ceux qui me nient entrent dans mes vues.
Ils nient l'image grotesque ou abominable que l'on a mise en ma place.
Dans ce monde d'idolâtres et d'hypocrites, seuls, ils me respectent
réellement.
Understand, faithful child, my tenderness for those who doubt and who
deny. Those doubts, those denials are founded on reason; they come from
my obstinate resolve to hide myself. Those who deny me enter into my
plans. They deny the grotesque or abominable image which men have set up
in my place. In a world of idolators and hypocrites, they alone really
respect me.
But what I gained from my uncle and his friends, from Nettleship and
from Warren, and also from the people I used to meet at the house of my
great-uncle, Dr. Frederick Symonds, was not all that I achieved in the
year before I matriculated. The air of Oxford did not repress but
greatly stimulated my love of verse and _belles-lettres_, and I
careered over the green pastures of our poetry like the colt let loose
that I was. Elizabethan plays were at the moment my pet reading, and
without knowing it I emulated Charles James Fox, who is said while at
Oxford to have read a play a day--no doubt out of the Doddesley
collection. I even went to the Bodleian in search of the Elizabethans,
and remember to this day my delight in handling the big and little books
mentioned by Lamb in his Dramatic Selections. I recall how I turned over
the leaves of such enchanting works as Inigo Jones's designs for _The
Tempest_ played as a Masque. Though I do not happen to have seen it
since, and so speak with a forty years' interval, the pen-and-ink
drawing of Ariel, portrayed exactly like a Cinquecento angel, is fixed
in my mind. It has all the graciousness and gentleness of Bellini and
all the robust beauty of Veronese or Palma Vecchio. To tell the truth, I
was in the mood of the lady of the Island over which Prospero waved his
wand. I could say with Miranda, "O brave new world, that has such men
and women in it!" Indeed, though I still stood outside the gates, as it
were, I had already felt the subtle intoxication of Oxford.
The result of all this was that when I at last got through Responsions
and entered Balliol, with the understanding that directly I got through
Pass Mods. I was to abandon the Classics and read for the History
School, I knew, as it were, too much and too little. This knowledge of
some things and want of knowledge of others produced a result which was
highly distasteful to the normal academic mind. In a word, I was in the
position of Gibbon when he went up to Magdalen. His ignorance would have
astonished a schoolboy and his learning a professor, and no doubt he
seemed to the greater part of the High Table an odious and forward young
man.
All the same, and though no one then believed it, I was extraordinarily
innocent, if not as to my ignorance, as to my learning. When I met a Don
who, I was told, was "unsurpassed" in the Greek or Latin classics and
could probably appreciate them as well as if he had been a Greek or
Roman of the best period, I was tremendously excited. I felt sure that
being so highly endowed in this direction he could not possibly have
neglected English literature, and must know all about that also, and so
would be of the greatest help to me. I was inclined, therefore, to rush
at these scholars with the perfect assurance that I could get something
from them. When, however, they either evaded my questionings or told me
curtly that they had never heard of the people about whom I asked, I
felt sure that this was only said to get rid of me. For some reason
unknown to me I had managed, I felt, to offend them as Alice offended
the creatures in Wonderland.
I can recall a specific example. I found a certain learned scholar who
had never even heard of, and took no interest in, Marlowe's _Dido and
Æneas_, and could not be drawn into expressing an opinion as to
whether the translations were good or bad. In other cases I found that
even the names of men like Burton of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_
produced no reaction. Yet, wretched Latinist as I was, I had been
thunderstruck with delight when, rummaging the Cathedral after a Sunday
service, where, by the way, I heard Pusey preach his last sermon, I came
upon Burton's tomb, and read for the first time the immortal epitaph
which begins:
_Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus,_
I can see now that what I thought was the pretended ignorance of the
Dons, and their fastidious unwillingness to talk to an uneducated
schoolboy, as I believed myself to be, was nothing of the kind. I have
not the slightest doubt now that they regarded me as a cheeky young ass
who was trying to show off in regard to things of which he was totally
ignorant and of which, needless to say, they were ignorant too, for,
alas! the minute study of the Classics does not appear to necessitate a
general knowledge of literature. A scholar fully _en rapport_ with
Aristophanes or Juvenal and Martial may never have read Ben Jonson's
_Alchemist,_ or Beaumont and Fletcher's _Knight of the Burning
Pestle;_ or studied Charles Churchill, or Green on _The Spleen._
There was a mental attitude which the typical Don, full of the public-
school spirit and its dislikes, could never forgive. Except for the few
intimate friends who were devoted to me--Nettleship and Warren, T. H.
Green and, later, curiously enough, Mr. A. L. Smith, the present Master
of Balliol,--I was, I expect, universally regarded as the most
intolerable undergraduate they had ever beheld.
Jowett, the Master of Balliol, evidently felt the Stracheyphobia very
strongly, or perhaps I should say felt it his duty to express it very
strongly. He had not, I think, a great natural instinct in regard to the
characters of young men, but he was naturally anxious to improve those
with whom he came in contact. His method was to apply two or three fixed
rules. One of these was--and a good one in suitable cases--that if you
got hold of a boy who thought too much of himself, the best thing was to
stamp upon him upon every possible occasion, and so help him to reform
his ways. No doubt it saved a great deal of trouble to give this rule a
universal application, and it was often successful. Every now and then,
however, the generalisation failed.
Fortunately for me, I was not only of a contented nature, but so happy--
and also so happy-go-lucky--that I was not the very least worried by the
opinion of my educational superiors. I should have been genuinely
pleased to have pleased them, but as I had clearly failed in that, I did
not trouble about it further. I could always console myself with the
thought that schoolmasters and dons were notoriously narrow-minded
people, and that when one got out into the big world their opinions
would matter very little.
In a word, I accepted the situation with a cheerful and genuine
acquiescence. The Master did not like me, but then, why should he? I was
obviously not a model undergraduate. This acquiescence was soon
buttressed by a reasoned if somewhat unfair estimate of the Master's
character. I very soon began to hear plenty of Oxford gossip about him
and his failings--chief among them being his supposed favouritism. He
was very generally called a snob, which no doubt, in a superficial
sense, he was, and I soon got my nose well in the air in regard to his
worship of dukes and marquesses and even of the offscourings of Debrett
and his willingness to give special privileges to their errant progeny.
I had, however, to give the Master credit for the way in which he would
often shower his partial favours on some boy who had climbed the ladder
of learning and risen from a Board School to become a Scholar or
Exhibitioner of Balliol. My general feeling, however, was that of the
idealist who despises the schoolmaster or the scholar who becomes
worldly in his old age, and even goes so far as to follow the shameless
maxim, "_Dine with the Tories and vote with the Whigs._"
Of course I know now that Jowett's apparent worldliness and snobbishness
were calculated. He was very anxious to get good educative influences
exerted over the men who were to rule the country. This, translated into
action, meant getting the big men of the day, the _Optimates_ of
British politics and commerce, to send their sons to Balliol. He also,
no doubt, liked smart society for itself. Men of the world, especially
when they were politicians or persons of distinction, greatly interested
the translator of Plato, Thucydides, and Aristotle. Though he was not
the kind of man to inflate himself with any idea that he was
"_Socrates redivivus_" I have no doubt that he found the worldlywise
malice of Lord Westbury as piquant as the Greek philosopher did the
talk of Alcibiades.
Young men, however, do not make excuses, and, as I have said, I was
inclined to be much scandalised, and to feel complacently self-righteous
over stories of the Master's "love of a lord"
The feeling which I engendered in the minds of the rest of the Balliol
Dons differed very little from that entertained by the Master. I can say
truthfully that I never received a word of encouragement, of kindly
direction, or of sympathy of any sort or kind from them in regard to my
work or anything else. The only exception was Mr. A. L. Smith. The
reason, I now feel sure, was that they believed that to take notice of
me would have only made me more uppish. I daresay they imagined I should
have been rude or surly, or have attempted to snub them. Still, the fact
is something of a record, and so worthy of note.
If I had been at a public school and had learned there to understand the
ways of teachers and masters, as the public-school boy learns to
understand them, as an old fox learns to understand the cry of the
hounds and of the huntsmen, I should have had no difficulty whatever in
getting on good terms with the College. As it was, I misunderstood them
quite as much as they misunderstood me. Each of us was unable to handle
the other. Yet I think, on a balance of accounts, I had a little more
excuse on my side than the Dons had. I was very young, very immature,
and without any knowledge or experience of institutional social life.
They, on the other hand, must have had previous knowledge of the
exceptional boy who had not been at a public school. Therefore they
should quite easily have been able to adjust their minds to my case.
They should not have allowed themselves to assume that the "uppishness"
was due to want of that humility which they rightly expected in their
pupils.
Curiously enough, my undergraduate contemporaries at Balliol were far
more successful in their efforts at understanding somebody who had not
been at a public school. They appeared to have no prejudices against the
homebred boy. I was never made in the least to feel that there was any
bar or barrier between me and my fellow-freshmen. As proof of this, I
may point to the fact that every one of my intimate friends at Balliol
were public-school boys. I have no doubt I was considered odd by most of
my contemporaries, but this oddness, and also my inability to play
football or cricket, never seemed to create, as far as I could see, any
prejudice. Indeed, I think that my friends were quite discerning enough
and quite free enough from convention to be amused and interested by a
companion who was not built up in accordance with the sealed pattern.
In spite of the Dons, about whom I troubled singularly little, in spite
of my being ploughed twice for Mods., sent down from my college, made to
become an unattached student, and only reinstated at Balliol after I had
got through Mods, and was guaranteed to be going to do well in the
History Schools, I can say with absolute truth that I was never anything
but supremely happy at Oxford--I might almost say deliriously happy.
I may interpolate here that when I went back to Balliol after my year as
an unattached student, the only thing that the Master said, on
readmitting me, was something of this kind: "The College is only taking
you back, Mr. Strachey, because your history tutor says that you are
likely to get a First." I was appropriately shocked at this, for I had
become well aware that Jowett was looked upon by a good many people in
the University as simply a hunter for Firsts, a Head who did not care
much what kind of people he had in his College, or how their minds were
developed in the highest sense, so long as they came out well in the
Schools List. He was alleged, that is, to take a tradesman's view of
learning. These kinds of gibe I naturally found soothing, for I was able
to imagine myself as a scholar, though not as a winner of a First.
Incidentally, also, though I did not acknowledge it to myself, I think I
was a little hurt by the Master's want of what I might call humanity, or
at any rate courtesy in his treatment of the shorn lamb of Moderations.
However, I have not the least doubt that he thought he was stimulating
me for my good. This, indeed, was his constant mood. I remember at
Collections his telling me that I should never do anything except,
possibly, be able to write light trifles for the magazines. On another
occasion he asked me what I was going to do in life. I told him that I
wanted to go to the Bar, which was then my intention. To this he replied
oracularly, "I should have thought you would have done better in
diplomacy."
That tickled me. It was clearly a back-hander over an ingenious attempt
which I had made a day or two before to prove how much better it would
be for me to get off three days before Collections and so obtain another
whole week in the bosom of my family at Cannes! No doubt Jowett's system
of controlling the recalcitrant portions of the College through sarcasm
was well meant and occasionally fairly successful. Taking it as a whole,
however, I felt then, as I feel now, that sarcasm is the one weapon
which it is never right or useful to use in the case of persons who are
in the dependent position when compared with the wielder of the
sarcastic rapier;--persons _in statu pupillari,_ persons much
younger than oneself, persons in one's employment, or, finally, members
of one's own family. Sarcasm should be reserved for one's equals, or,
still better, for one's superiors. The man who is treated with sarcasm,
if he cannot answer back either because it is true, or he is stupid, or
he is afraid to counter-attack a superior, is filled, and naturally
filled, with a sense of burning indignation. He feels he has had a cruel
wrong done to him and is in no mood to be converted to better courses.
That to which his mind reacts at once is some form of vengeance, some
way of getting even with his tormentor. The words that burn or rankle or
corrode are not the words to stimulate. No doubt Socrates said that he
was the gadfly of the State and stung that noble animal into action, but
what may be good for a sluggish old coach-horse is not necessarily good
for a thoroughbred colt with a thin skin.
To return to my general feeling about Oxford while I lived there.
Instinctively I seem to have realised what I came to see so clearly in
my post-Oxford days, that the great thing that one gets at a University
is what Bagehot called the "impact of young mind upon young mind."
Though there must be examinations and lectures, and discipline and hard
reading, nothing of all this matters a jot in comparison with the
association of youth with youth and the communion of quick and eager
spirits. I have lived my life with clever people, men and women who
thought themselves masters of dialectic, but I can say truthfully that I
have never heard such good talk as in my own rooms and in the rooms of
my contemporaries at Oxford. There, and there only, have I seen
practised what Dr. Johnson believed to be an essential to good talk, the
ability to stretch one's legs and have one's talk out. It may be
remembered that Dr. Johnson, in praising John Wesley as a talker, sadly
admitted that his great qualities in this respect were all marred
because Wesley was always in a hurry, always had some pressing business
in hand which cut him short when at his best.
The happy undergraduate never has to catch a train, never has an editor
or a printer waiting for him, never has an appointment which he cannot
cut, never, in effect, has money to make. He comes, indeed, nearer than
anybody else on earth to the Hellenic ideal of the good citizen, of the
free man in a free state. If he wants to talk all through the night with
his friends, he talks. The idea of his sparing himself in order that he
may be fresh next morning for Mr. Jones's lecture never enters his head
for a moment. Rightly; he considers that to talk at large with a couple
of friends is the most important thing in the world. In my day we would
talk about anything, from the Greek feeling about landscape to the
principles the Romans would have taken as the basis of actuarial tables,
if they had had them. We unsphered Plato, we speculated as to what
Euripides would have thought of Henry James, or whether Sophocles would
have enjoyed Miss---'s acting, and felt that it was of vital import to
decide these matters. But I must stop, for I see I am beginning to make
most dangerous admissions. If I go on, indeed, I am likely enough to
become as much disliked by the readers of the present day as I was by
the Oxford Dons of forty years ago.
I could fill this book with stories of my life at Oxford, of its
enchantment, of my friendships, of my walks and rides and of my
expeditions up the river; for, not being a professional athlete, I had
time to enjoy myself. It would be a delight also to recall my
associations, the first in my life, with young men who were writing
verses, like myself, such men as Beeching, Mackail, Spring Rice (our
Ambassador during the War, at Washington), Rennell Rodd, Nicolls, and a
dozen others. But space forbids. I can only quote Shenstone's delightful
verses on Oxford, in his _Ode to Memory_, verses which I have
quoted a hundred times:
And sketch with care the Muses' bow'r,
Where Isis rolls her silver tide,
Nor yet omit one reed or flow'r
That shines on Cherwell's verdant side,
If so thou may'st those hours prolong
When polish'd Lycon join'd my song.
The song it Vails not to recite--
But, sure, to soothe our youthful dreams,
Those banks and streams appear'd more bright
Than other banks, than other streams;
Or, by thy softening pencil shown,
Assume they beauties not their own?
And paint that sweetly vacant scene
When, all beneath the poplar bough,
My spirits light, my soul serene,
I breathed in verse one cordial vow
That nothing should my soul inspire
But friendship warm and love entire.
I do not mean to inflict upon my readers the tiresome record of my
failure to pass Moderations, or the description of how I did eventually
get through by a process which came very near to learning by heart
English translations of Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, a portion of
Livy's History, and Horace's Epistles. To do so would be both long and
tedious. The circumstances have, however, a certain interest considered
from one point of view, and that is the use and misuse of the classics
for educational purposes.