CHARLES MARRIOTT
Charles Marriott was a man who was drawn into the movement, almost in
spite of himself, by the attraction of the character of the leaders,
the greatness of its object, and the purity and nobleness of the motives
which prompted it. He was naturally a man of metaphysical mind, given
almost from a child to abstract and indeed abstruse thought.[31] He had
been a student of S.T. Coleridge, whom the Oriel men disliked as a misty
thinker. He used to discuss Coleridge with a man little known then, but
who gained a high reputation on the Continent as a first-rate Greek
scholar, and became afterwards Professor of Greek in the University of
Sydney, Charles Badham. Marriott also appreciated Hampden as a
philosopher, whom the Oriel men thoroughly distrusted as a theologian.
He might easily under different conditions have become a divine of the
type of F.D. Maurice. He was by disposition averse to anything like
party, and the rough and sharp proceedings which party action sometimes
seems to make natural. His temper was eminently sober, cautious and
conciliatory in his way of looking at important questions. He was a man
with many friends of different sorts and ways, and of boundless though
undemonstrative sympathy. His original tendencies would have made him an
eclectic, recognising the strength of position in opposing schools or
theories, and welcoming all that was good and high in them. He was
profoundly and devotedly religious, without show, without extravagance.
His father, who died when he was only fourteen, had been a distinguished
man in his time. He was a Christ Church man, and one of two in the first
of the Oxford Honour lists in 1802, with E. Copleston, H. Phillpotts,
and S.P. Rigaud for his examiners. He was afterwards tutor to the Earl
of Dalkeith, and he became the friend of Walter Scott, who dedicated to
him the Second Canto of _Marmion_; and having ready and graceful
poetical talent, he contributed several ballads to the _Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border, The Feast of Spurs_, and _Archie Armstrong's Aith_.
He was a good preacher; his sympathies--of friendship, perhaps, rather
than of definite opinion--were with men like Mr. John Bowdler and the
Thorntons. While he lived he taught Charles Marriott himself. After his
death, Charles, a studious boy, with ways of his own of learning, and
though successful and sure in his work, very slow in the process of
doing it, after a short and discouraging experiment at Rugby, went to
read with a private tutor till he went to Oxford. He was first at
Exeter, and then gained a scholarship at Balliol. He gained a Classical
First Class and a Mathematical Second in the Michaelmas Term of 1832,
and the following Easter he was elected Fellow at Oriel.
For a man of his power and attainments he was as a speaker, and in
conversation, surprisingly awkward. He had a sturdy, penetrating,
tenacious, but embarrassed intellect--embarrassed, at least, by the
crowd and range of jostling thoughts, in its outward processes and
manifestations, for he thoroughly trusted its inner workings, and was
confident of the accuracy of the results, even when helplessly unable to
justify them at the moment.[32] In matters of business he seemed at
first sight utterly unpractical. In discussing with keen, rapid, and
experienced men like the Provost, the value of leases, or some question
of the management of College property, Marriott, who always took great
interest in such inquiries, frequently maintained some position which to
the quicker wits round him seemed a paradox or a mare's nest. Yet it
often happened that after a dispute, carried on with a brisk fire of not
always respectful objections to Marriott's view, and in which his only
advantage was the patience with which he clumsily, yet surely, brought
out the real point of the matter, overlooked by others, the debate
ended in the recognition that he had been right. It was often a strange
and almost distressing sight to see the difficulty under which he
sometimes laboured of communicating his thoughts, as a speaker at a
meeting, or as a teacher to his hearers, or even in the easiness of
familiar talk. The comfort was that he was not really discouraged. He
was wrestling with his own refractory faculty of exposition and speech;
it may be, he was busy deeper down in the recesses and storehouses of
his mind; but he was too much taken up with the effort to notice what
people thought of it, or even if they smiled; and what he had to say was
so genuine and veracious, as an expression of his meaning, so full of
benevolence, charity, and generosity, and often so weighty and
unexpected, that men felt it a shame to think much of the peculiarities
of his long look of blank silence, and the odd, clumsy explanations
which followed it. He was a man, under an uncouth exterior, of the
noblest and most affectionate nature; most patient, indulgent, and
hopeful to all in whom he took an interest, even when they sorely tried
his kindness and his faith in them. Where he loved and trusted and
admired, he was apt to rate very highly, sometimes too highly. His
gratitude was boundless. He was one of those who deliberately gave up
the prospect of domestic life, to which he was naturally drawn, for the
sake of his cause. Capable of abstract thought beyond most men of his
time, and never unwilling to share his thoughts with those at all
disposed to venture with him into deep waters, he was always ready to
converse or to discuss on much more ordinary ground. As an undergraduate
and a young bachelor, he had attained, without seeking it, a position of
almost unexampled authority in the junior University world that was
hardly reached by any one for many years at least after him. He was
hopeless as a speaker in the Union; but with all his halting and
bungling speeches, that democratic and sometimes noisy assembly bore
from him with kindly amusement and real respect what they would bear
from no one else, and he had an influence in its sometimes turbulent
debates which seems unaccountable. He was the _vir pietate gravis_. In a
once popular squib, occasioned by one of the fiercest of these debates,
this unique position is noticed and commemorated--
Οὐδ' ἔλαθεν Μαρίωτα, φιλαίτατον Ὠρειήλων
* * * * *
Ἦλθε μέγα γρώνων, Μασιχοῖς καὶ πᾶσ' ἀγαπητός,
Καὶ σμείλων, προσέφη πάντας κείνδοις ἐπέεσιν.[33]
His ways and his talk were such as to call forth not unfrequent mirth
among those who most revered him. He would meet you and look you in the
face without speaking a word. He was not without humour; but his jokes,
carried off by a little laugh of his own, were apt to be recondite in
their meaning and allusions. With his great power of sympathy, he yet
did not easily divine other men's lighter or subtler moods, and odd and
sometimes even distressing mistakes were the consequence. His health was
weak, and a chronic tenderness of throat and chest made him take
precautions which sometimes seemed whimsical; and his well-known figure
in a black cloak, with a black veil over his college cap, and a black
comforter round his neck, which at one time in Oxford acquired his name,
sometimes startled little boys and sleepy college porters when he came
on them suddenly at night.
With more power than most men of standing alone, and of arranging his
observations on life and the world in ways of his own, he had
pre-eminently above all men round him, in the highest and noblest form,
the spirit of a disciple. Like most human things, discipleship has its
good and its evil, its strong and its poor and dangerous side; but it
really has, what is much forgotten now, a good and a strong side. Both
in philosophy and religion, the μαθητὴς is a distinct character, and
Charles Marriott was an example of it at its best. He had its manly and
reasonable humility, its generous trustfulness, its self-forgetfulness;
he had, too, the enthusiasm of having and recognising a great master and
teacher, and doing what he wanted done; and he learned from the love of
his master to love what he believed truth still more. The character of
the disciple does not save a man from difficulties, from trouble and
perplexity; but it tends to save him from idols of his own making. It is
something, in the trials of life and faith, to have the consciousness of
knowing or having known some one greater and better and wiser than
oneself, of having felt the spell of his guidance and example.
Marriott's mind, quick to see what was real and strong, and at once
reverent to it as soon as he saw it, came very much, as an undergraduate
at Balliol, under the influence of a very able and brilliant tutor,
Moberly, afterwards Headmaster of Winchester and Bishop of Salisbury;
and to the last his deference and affection to his old tutor remained
unimpaired. But he came under a still more potent charm when he moved to
Oriel, and became the friend of Mr. Newman. Master and disciple were as
unlike as any two men could be; they were united by their sympathy in
the great crisis round them, by their absorbing devotion to the cause of
true religion. Marriott brought to the movement, and especially to its
chief, a great University character, and an unswerving and touching
fidelity. He placed himself, his life, and all that he could do, at the
service of the great effort to elevate and animate the Church; to the
last he would gladly have done so under him whom he first acknowledged
as his master. This was not to be; and he transferred his allegiance, as
unreservedly, with equal loyalty and self-sacrifice, to his successor.
But to the end, while his powers lasted, with all his great gifts and
attainments, with every temptation to an independent position and
self-chosen employment, he continued a disciple. He believed in men
wiser than himself; he occupied himself with what they thought best for
him to do.
This work was, for the most part, in what was done to raise the standard
of knowledge of early Christian literature, and to make that knowledge
accurate and scholarlike. He was, for a time, the Principal of the
Theological College at Chichester, under Bishop Otter. He was also for a
time Tutor at Oriel, and later, Vicar of St. Mary's. He was long bent on
setting on foot some kind of Hall for poor students; and he took over
from Mr. Newman the buildings at Littlemore, which he turned into a
place for printing religious works. But though he was connected more or
less closely with numberless schemes of Christian work in Oxford and out
of it, his special work was that of a theological student. Marriott had
much to do with the Library of the Fathers, with correcting
translations, collating manuscripts, editing texts.[34] Somehow, the
most interesting portions hardly came to his share; and what he did in
the way of original writing, little as it was, causes regret that so
much of his time was spent on the drudgery of editing. Some sermons, a
little volume of _Thoughts on Private Devotion_, and another on the
_Epistle to the Romans_, are nearly all that he has left of his own.
Novelty of manner or thought in them there is none, still less anything
brilliant or sharp in observation or style; but there is an undefinable
sense, in their calm, severe pages, of a deep and serious mind dwelling
on deep and very serious things. It is impossible not to wish that a
man who could so write and impress people might have had the leisure to
write more.
But Marriott never had any leisure. It has been said above that he
placed himself at the service of those whom he counted his teachers. But
the truth is that he was at every one's service who wanted or who asked
his help. He had a large, and what must have been often a burdensome,
correspondence. With pupils or friends he was always ready for some
extra bit of reading. To strangers he was always ready to show attention
and hospitality, though Marriott's parties were as quaint as himself.
His breakfast parties in his own room were things to have seen--a crowd
of undergraduates, finding their way with difficulty amid lanes and
piles of books, amid a scarcity of chairs and room, and the host,
perfectly unconscious of anything grotesque, sitting silent during the
whole of the meal, but perfectly happy, at the head of the table. But
there was no claimant on his purse or his interest who was too strange
for his sympathy--raw freshmen, bores of every kind, broken-down
tradesmen, old women, distressed foreigners, converted Jews, all the odd
and helpless wanderers from beaten ways, were to be heard of at
Marriott's rooms; and all, more or less, had a share of his time and
thoughts, and perhaps counsel. He was sensible of worry as he grew
older; but he never relaxed his efforts to do what any one asked of him.
There must be even now some still living who know what no one else
knows, how much they owe, with no direct claim on him, to Charles
Marriott's inexhaustible patience and charity. The pains which he would
take with even the most uncongenial and unpromising men, who somehow had
come in his way, and seemed thrown on his charge, the patience with
which he would bear and condone their follies and even worse, were not
to be told, for, indeed, few knew what they were.
"He was always ready to be the friend of any one whose conduct gave
proofs of high principle, however inferior to himself in knowledge or
acquirements, and his friendship once gained was not easily lost. I
believe there was nothing in his power which he was not ready to do for
a friend who wanted his help. It is not easy to state instances of such
kindness without revealing what for many reasons had better be left
untold. But many such have come to my knowledge, and I believe there are
many more known only to himself and to those who derived benefit from
his disinterested friendship."[35]
Marriott's great contribution to the movement was his solid, simple
goodness, his immovable hope, his confidence that things would come
right. With much imaginativeness open to poetical grandeur and charm,
and not without some power of giving expression to feeling, he was
destitute of all that made so many others of his friends interesting as
men. He was nothing, as a person to know and observe, to the genius of
the two Mozleys, to the brilliant social charm of Frederic Faber, to the
keen, refined intelligence of Mark Pattison, to the originality and
clever eccentricity of William Palmer of Magdalen. And he was nothing as
a man of practical power for organising and carrying out successful
schemes: such power was not much found at Oxford in those days. But his
faith in his cause, as the cause of goodness and truth, was proof
against mockery or suspicion or disaster. When ominous signs disturbed
other people he saw none. He had an almost perverse subtlety of mind
which put a favourable interpretation on what seemed most formidable. As
his master drew more and more out of sympathy with the English Church,
Marriott, resolutely loyal to it and to him, refused to understand hints
and indications which to others were but too plain. He vexed and even
provoked Newman, in the last agonies of the struggle, by the optimism
with which he clung to useless theories and impossible hopes. For that
unquenchable hoping against hope, and hope unabated still when the
catastrophe had come, the English Church at least owes him deep
gratitude. Throughout those anxious years he never despaired of her.
All through his life he was a beacon and an incitement to those who
wished to make a good use of their lives. In him all men could see,
whatever their opinions and however little they liked him, the
simplicity and the truth of a self-denying life of suffering--for he was
never well--of zealous hard work, unstinted, unrecompensed; of unabated
lofty hopes for the great interests of the Church and the University; of
deep unpretending matter-of-course godliness and goodness--without "form
or comeliness" to attract any but those who cared for them, for
themselves alone. It is almost a sacred duty to those who remember one
who cared nothing for his own name or fame to recall what is the
truth--that no one did more to persuade those round him of the solid
underground religious reality of the movement. Mr. Thomas Mozley, among
other generous notices of men whom the world and their contemporaries
have forgotten, has said what is not more than justice.[36] Speaking of
the enthusiasm of the movement, and the spirit of its members, "There
had never been seen at Oxford, indeed seldom anywhere, so large and
noble a sacrifice of the most precious gifts and powers to a sacred
cause," he points out what each of the leaders gave to it: "Charles
Marriott threw in his scholarship and something more, for he might have
been a philosopher, and he had poetry in his veins, being the son of the
well-known author of the 'Devonshire Lane.' No one sacrificed himself so
entirely to the cause, giving to it all that he had and all that he was,
as Charles Marriott. He did not gather large congregations; he did not
write works of genius to spread his name over the land, and to all time;
he had few of the pleasures or even of the comforts that spontaneously
offer themselves in any field of enterprise. He laboured day and night
in the search and defence of Divine Truth. His admirers were not the
thousands, but the scholars who could really appreciate. I confess to
have been a little ashamed of myself when Bishop Burgess asked me about
Charles Marriott, as one of the most eminent scholars of the day.
Through sheer ignorance I had failed in adequate appreciation." In his
later years he became a member of the new Hebdomadal Council at Oxford,
and took considerable part in working the new constitution of the
University. In an epidemic of smallpox at Oxford in 1854, he took his
full share in looking after the sick, and caught the disorder; but he
recovered. At length, in the midst of troublesome work and many
anxieties, his life of toil was arrested by a severe paralytic seizure,
29th June 1855. He partially rallied, and survived for some time longer;
but his labours were ended. He died at Bradfield, 25th September 1858.
He was worn out by variety and pressure of unintermitted labour, which
he would scarcely allow any change or holiday to relieve. Exhaustion
made illness, when it came, fatal.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] "He told me," writes a relative, "that questions about trade used
to occupy him very early in life. He used to ponder how it could be
right to sell things for more than they cost you."
[32] "He had his own way of doing everything, and used most stoutly to
protest that it was quite impossible that he should do it in any
other."--_MS. Memoir_ by his brother, John Marriott.
[33] _Uniomachia_, 1833.
[34] "This became the main task of his life us long as health was
continued to him. All who knew him well will remember how laboriously he
worked at it, and how, in one shape or another, it was always on hand.
Either he was translating, or correcting the translation of others; or
he was collating MSS., or correcting the press. This last work was
carried on at all times and wherever he was--on a journey, after
dinner--even in a boat, he would pull out a sheet and go to write upon
it in haste to get it finished for the next post. The number of volumes
in the Library of the Fathers which bear the signature C.M. attest his
diligence."--John Marriott's Memoir of him (MS.)
[35] J.M., _MS. Memoir_.
[36] _Rem._ i. 447.